In this post, you will learn how to provide your Hyper-V Server 2012 system with a static IP address and how to join it to an Active Directory domain. This assumes that you already have a domain to which the Hyper-V server can be joined. I’m also assuming that you have installed Hyper-V Server 2012 using the default settings. If that’s the case, you should see a screen like the one below after you reboot your server. We’ll start by changing the network settings, so choose option 8.
Once you tell Hyper-V that you want to configure network settings, you’re shown a list of the available network adapters. In my case, I have just a single network adapter. The “index number” is the item that I type into the command field, in this case, “11.”
Now, I have to configure some settings. For my lab, I just need to make sure that the DNS server points to the domain controller that I’m using for this particular example. As you can see in the figure below, the IP address of my domain controller (with a DNS server installed) is 172.17.131.202.
With that done, the attention turns to joining the server to the domain. That’s option 1 from the main menu, as shown below. Once you select that option, you’re asked if you want to configure for a domain or for a workgroup. Choose D for domain.
When prompted, type in the name of your domain. My lab domain is lowelab12.local.
You will then be prompted to provide the username and password for a user that has rights to join a computer to a domain. When you’re done, you’ll be asked if you’d also like to change the name of the server. My server is already named appropriately, so I skipped this option.
You will have to restart your server at this point. When the system reboots, you can see that the machine is now joined to a domain.
