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Sal SoriceFlag for United States of America

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Using an internal domain name that you do not own

Sigh. Recently setup a new 2012RS Standard Server for a client. The Server is used for basic services (file sharing, remote access, etc). Email is handled by Office365. It's a small company (5 employees - 2 local and 3 always remote).

Following recommended practices I set the internal domain to 'internal.companydomain.com'

In one respect, my client got lucky. A BIG company paid them mucho dollars to buy the domain.

My gut instinct is to do a re-install using the new name they register. They want to know if we can just leave it as is and adjust as needed for the new domain (remote access. etc.).

Makes me a bit uneasy to keep the old domain - afraid there might be DNS issues down the road.

Any potential pitfalls, like the external clients having DNS issues, etc.? Should I follow my instincts and insist that we do a reinstall?
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Ganesh Anand
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There will definitely DNS issue when you have internet connection on the domain joined machines or servers. For that use domain renaming procedure to rename or create another domain tree with internal name. Migrate all accounts within the forest. Then remove the old domain name or just leave it.

But if you want to make it fresh, this is always a wise idea to have domain name suffix with .local or .int. If you have so much patience and you want to have everything with new domain, go for fresh forest.
OK.
If you want to use domain name that someone else own on External DNS but you're absolutely sure that your users will use this domain only INSIDE, you can do it.
But You need to create Forward Lookup Zone in your local DNS and point all requests like www, FTP, etc. to local IP address.
Also you need to put all that information in server localhost file.

Any requests for external name from inside is going to be rerouted to your internal server.
All this settings will work only from inside. For outside requests you're going to be rerouted to owner of the name registered in External DNS
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Shaun Vermaak
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Thanks all for the comments so far. I'm leaning towards re-install but will wait a bit longer to see if any other comments are posted.
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Thanks all for the comments. My client decided that, even though they probably could leave it as is, always (locally) logging into a domain they don't was not in their long term best interests. Going to have to do a reinstall.