In an ideal network you’ll have more than one server, this means you’ll need to be adding servers to the Domain. You can have large deployments with hundreds of servers managing hundreds of thousands of users. In this article I’ll be explaining how to add servers to an existing Domain.

I’ll be presuming you have a fresh install of Server 2016 on your new Server/VM.

Adding the Server

The first thing I’ll do is assign a static IP to the server I’m going to add to the Domain. It’s good practice to keep a static IP on all Servers outside the DHCP range. You’ll want to point the first DNS option to your current Domain Controller.

Now, open the System page using Windows Key + Pause/Break. If you’re in a VM and can’t use that, it’s System in Control Panel.

Under Computer name, domain and workgroup settings click Change settings.

You’ll now be in System Properties on the Computer Name tab. Click on Change…. Enter a name, click the domain circle and type your domain in.

Hit OK and type the administrator username/password for your server. Then you should be presented with a message like this.

Restart your server and you’re now on the domain! There is one more thing left to do, you’ll want to make sure you’re logging in to the Domain administrator account and not the local one. To do that click Other Users in the bottom left corner and type in your account name as domain\user like below. When you see it saying it’ll sign in to your domain, you’re right.

Now you’re done! The server won’t be doing anything yet but it is a part of your domain. You could create file shares on or set up other services from it.