Windows Server 2008 R2 : What is New in Active Directory (part 2) - Offline Domain Join

2. Offline Domain Join

Offline Domain Join is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 that allows you to join a computer to an AD domain without having connectivity to a DC. The Offline Domain Join is a three-step process described subsequently:

The Offline Domain Join process can be very useful when you are automatically deploying a large number of computers, or if you want to give someone the ability to join a computer to the domain, without them needing special privileges in AD. The following tasks will walk you through the process to perform an Offline Domain Join.

In this process, we will be using two computers. LABDC1 will be the DC hosting the contoso.com domain. Srv1 will join the LABDC1 domain using the Offline Domain Join process.

1.	Log on to the domain controller (LABDC1).
2.	Open a command prompt and enter the command djoin/provision/domain contoso.com/machine Srv1/SaveFile C:\djoinprovision.txt (see Figure 7). This command is telling the computer to run the djoin provisioning process for the contoso.com domain. Create a djoin file for the server Srv1 and save it as C:\djoinprovision.txt. After running the command, you should receive confirmation that the offline domain join file was created successfully. Figure 7. Provision Computer and Create Offline Domain Join File.
3.	You now need to copy the file to the computer you want to join to the domain. You can use any method you prefer to copy the file. We just need to have it on the machine that we want to join to the domain.
4.	Log on to the server we want to join to the domain (Srv1). Check the computer properties to ensure that the computer is a member of a workgroup and not joined to the domain (see Figure 8). Figure 8. Computer properties.
5.	Open a command prompt and run the command djoin/requestODJ/loadfile C:\djoinprovision.txt/Windowspath C:\Windows (see Figure 9). This command is telling the computer that on next boot, it should join the domain using the information provided in the file C:\djoinprovision.txt. You should see a success message and a notice stating you must reboot the computer for it to complete the offline domain join process. Figure 9. Perform offline Domain Join process.
6.	You can now power down or reboot the computer as you normally do after joining a computer to a domain. At this point, the computer is joined to the domain and needs to reboot for changes to take effect on the local machine.
7.	Log on to the computer and view computer properties to verify that it was indeed joined to the domain (see Figure 10). Figure 10. Computer joined to domain.