What should I call my new Active Directory domain? 2

[outonalimb]

I am confused to what DNS name I should give my new AD domain. Do I use Microsoft's recommendation and choose a .local suffix or should I use a .co.uk?

We have a web site

http://www.acme.co.uk

which is hosted by an ISP. I was going to use acme.co.uk as our internal DNS name space but then stopped when I did some further research on the internet. It suggests separating external DNS names with internal ones and using a .local address - i.e. acme.local.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should choose? Could we still possibly host our web site if we went down the .local route?

Regards,

 

[markdmac]

Name it fluffy.

OK seriously it really doesn't matter. You can use the public name if you want so long as you are aware you will need to create hosts entries for any Internet resources such as the web site you reference.

I find it best and easiest to go with the .local address to eliminate the confusion.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[nige1121]

definatly go with .local, it can stop a lot of conufsion later with users etc

 

[technome]

You have a registered domain, acme.co.uk.. you could use a name such as hq.acme.co.uk for your internal name. The negative parts, the name is a bit long, it would be preferable to have the ISP give you control over acme.co.uk if you need to renew, add records as in MX records for a mail server. Also how long is acme.co.uk register for, the cost per year (should be for 10 years). With a .local you would not need to worry about registering, though it would not allow you to have mail servers or web servers internally under the .local domain for access from the Internet; if you are sure you will not host servers, use a .local domain name, keep the name short, as in Hq.local or FS1.local.



........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[markdmac]

though it would not allow you to have mail servers or web servers internally under the .local domain for access from the Internet;

technome this is totally incorrect.

All that is required to access a mail server is to register an MX record in public DNS. It has absolutley nothing to do with active directory. Firthermore an Exchange server can support multiple domains. Typically an Exchange box is installed and by default will run the internal only address space of the .local. You then let it know the domain it is primarily responsible for (public name).

For a web server it is the same thing. You simply create a host record in public DNS and point it to the public IP of the web site. Again totally independent of AD. Each issue is simply an IP routing and name resolution issue.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[technome]

Thanks for the correction.

........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[PScottC]

I like to go with a variant of Microsoft's .local extension since I like the last part of the domain to be short. I generally use one of the following non-internet extensions:

Enterprise - .ent
Corporate - .corp
Internal. - .int
(industry related) Bank - .bank

In fact, I try to keep AD domain names under 10 characters if I can. I often use the initials of the company for the domain name. So instead of having to type [red]MyEntireCompanyName\myusername[/red] to log in under alternate credentials I only have to type [red]MECN\myusername[/red]. Also consider what will be easier for your users to type when they want to go to your intranet page... [red]intranet.MyEntireCompanyName.local[/red] or [red]intranet.MECN.loc[/red]

In the end it doesn't matter what your domain name is, everything will work. It's just you'll regret long or ungainly names in the future when you have to type 30+ characters just to log in. And training users to do the same is a pain.

Good Luck!

PSC

Governments and corporations need people like you and me. We are samurai. The keyboard cowboys. And all those other people out there who have no idea what's going on are the cattle. Mooo! --Mr. The Plague, from the movie "Hackers

 

[outonalimb]

Thanks for the responses. It's cleared up any confusion I had in mind.