At my company we develop on virtual machines, the problem is that we create a new VM for every client. Since there is a lot, we have a base VM setup up with Windows Server 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008 R2. This is a master VM and gets copied to create a client VM every time. The problem with this is that it is also setup as a local domain controller. Renaming a DC is a risky business, but I found a great post on how to use tools provided by Microsoft to rename a server that is a DC, and this is a pretty simple three step operation:

There is only one requirement, the user running these commands must be a domain admin. So open a Command Prompt window, and type the following commands:

NOTE: for this I am going to use the following details:

• Current name: jnbapp.dev.local
• New name: devapp.dev.local
• Domain: dev (dev.local)

1. netdom computername jnbapp.dev.local /add: devapp.dev.local
2. netdom computername jnbapp.dev.local /makeprimary: devapp.dev.local
3. You must now restart the machine, you can’t skip this step !!
4. Once restarted: netdom devapp.dev.local /remove:jnbapp.dev.local

netdom is tool that you can use to do many operations, but here we are telling it that we want to modify the “computername” settings.

Once you have done those 4 simple steps, your DC is now renamed.

Disclaimer:

Please read the disclaimer if you plan on using anything from this article.