stuart test blog

Now that I have a new Server Core installation ready for setup, I read through the Step by Step guide a bit more and continued on to the initial setup.

1. Change the admin password
   As I mentioned in a previous post, when you create a new Server Core installation you are greeted with a logon box asking for a username and password. To log in you must use Administrator with a blank password and you’re presented with a command prompt window. Type the following to get a prompt to change the admin password:
   net user administrator *
2. Set a static IP address
   This step wouldn’t be necessary if we were already running a DHCP server and wanted to use that to hand out IP addresses, but seeing as we’re setting up the first server in our domain, we need this one to have a static IP address. First step to perform is to run the following command to get the list of network adapters connected to the server:
   netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces
   Make a note of the “Idx” number of the connection as you’ll need this for the next command:
   netsh interface ipv4 set address name="Idx number" source=static address="ip address" mask="subnet mask" gateway="gateway address"
   You then need to add DNS servers to the IP configuration, but because this server will be my first DNS server, I’ll set the address to the localhost address like this:
   netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name="Idx number" address="127.0.0.1" index=1
   You can add further DNS servers if you wish by running the same command above while incrementing the index value at the end.
   You can check that the command has worked by running a standard “ipconfig” command.
3. Rename the server
   I’m going to give this server the very creative name of: vmscdc1 (VMware, Server Core, Domain Controller 1) using the following command:
   Netdom renamecomputer CurrentComputerName /NewName:vmscdc1
   I forgot to mention that you need to get the current computer name first, using the hostname command. Once the command has run, it’s time to reboot the computer.

The next step will be to create the domain, which I’ll cover in the next post.