Domains in Windows Server 2003 ?

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Howdy all,

I'm confused about how this all works. I set up a test Windows Server 2003 system, and a Vista machine. I created a new domain, called "NEW.DOMAIN" with a NetBIOS name of "NETBIOS_NAME" ... I still don't understand why there has to be two names... but anyway:

- I set the password for the user "Samuel" in Active Directory, yet, when I logged into it via the Vista machine, the password was blank. Unsure why... I turned off the server, and to my surprise was still able to log into the domain w/ a blank password. Is that normal? Shouldn't it say something like "domain not available/responding"??

- I attempted to RDP into the Vista machine from the Administrator user in the Win2k3 Server, yet no password would work. So, looking through the RDP users to add, I could not see a user called "test" that I had created for just this purpose because the Vista machine was looking "From this location: VISTABETA2" (VISTABETA2 is the computer's hostname). I was unable to change the "From this location:" to anything else other than the localmachine. Why would it not be showing me all users on the domain?

I don't know what I am missing here. I've attached photos. Thank you all very much for reading!

 

Thank you both for your insights.

wagnerk, I must have been doing something wrong, the Vista machine did not provide me any other Locations when I selected the "Locations..." button. So, I have since deleted everything and started over.

I don't think I understand some general principles well enough just yet, can you guys help me out?

I am trying to wrap my head around DNS, and understand why I would ever need a DNS server. I finally figured out that you can configure DNS on the server, and then set the clients to use the IP of the server as their DNS servers and then all the traffic will route through the server. If I am not mistaken -- client machines will query the DNS server, then the DNS server will go out to the ISP's DNS servers and retrieve the correct information and then send it back to the client, through my server. So, why would I ever need to have a local DNS server when I could just have all my clients set up through the ISP's DNS servers directly? This seems like an added layer of complexity for no benefit that I can wrap my brain around?

Thanks again for all your help!

 

Your ISPs DNS servers only know about computers on the internet / those with a public IP address. Say your own network was a corporate one with 1000 machines, workstations and servers. Your ISP has no way of knowing about these machines and nor should it. Rather you run your own DNS server so that your computers know how to find each other within their own network. That way my outlook client can find the exchange server to send email, my web browser can find the intranet server and my windows explorer can find my home network drive.

Make sense?

 

Thanks jiggy, that indeed makes plenty of sense. It was just confusing to me since all the examples online only showed a client machine accessing Internet resources via the locally hosted DNS server... which is redundant.

Anyhow, it seems that the Windows Server 2k3 DNS is designed to help manage a FQDN, which would be a domain that you've purchased from a registrar, right? You can manage a made up "domain.private" or whatever, but, then, why does it insist that you call it "something.dot.something" in that manner? I don't have a purchased-from-a-registrar-domain-name that I want managed by Windows Server 2k3 DNS. So, what to do? How do I make just a regular old "local" DNS zone for testing purposes. Should I call it "test.local"?

 

If you didn't have a server for your local names you'd have to use IP address all the time. You could use a WINS server but the flat namespace and limited charachter length in netbios make it impractical for organisations of any size.

 

you can call your domain whatever you want internally. You could call it google.com, test.local, mydomain.co.uk, whatever, it will all work fine internally. Externally will be a different story as someone else owns google.com.

To practice I suggest you call it something like mydomain.local just to keep things simple. Once you have setup the domain you need to add your clients to the domain (i.e. your vista machine).

You are asking some good questions and thinking things through well, keep it up.

 

Thank you, thank you! I'll continue my testing -- very much appreciate all your help!