# Setting up Home AD Solution



## CdnXxRRODxX (Nov 7, 2012)

Hey guys, so I've been digging around the internet and have come up with a variety of mixed opinions on setting up a home AD domain to manage my PCs and basically have an SSO solution for my home.

Basically, I was thinking of setting up a Windows Server 2008 R2 instance (maybe Win Server 2012) and of course setting up AD and along with it DNS. Then adding all the computers on my home network to the domain so that I can sign in to each with the same credentials. I was also maybe looking at setting up some group policies for update preferences and maybe some additional settings as I look into them.

One major issue that I've seen someone come is across is for laptops that will of course be taken outside of the domain environment. The issue I've seen with this is that I will have to set the DNS addresses manually when the laptop is in my home, but then switching the settings to automatic when it's outside of my network. 

Is there any solution to make the automatic DNS settings detect my DC as the DNS server? Also are they are any more drawbacks to my idea? Any other single sign-on solutions that I should explore? All the computers in my home are running Windows Vista, 7, or 8.

Also, as far as my home network goes, it goes from my modem to my router, then my router goes to all the devices via wired or wireless configuration. One of the wired connections on the router goes to a switch (dumb-switch not configurable just pass-through) which delivers wired-internet to my entertainment unit.


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## srhoades (May 15, 2003)

Whether you are using the server or your router for DHCP, you can specify the DNS adresses to be given out in the DHCP scope so the DNS issues is a non-issue.


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## CdnXxRRODxX (Nov 7, 2012)

Oh I see, awesome. I'm going to be setting this up later this week so I'll see how that goes.

Thanks for the suggestion, makes sense to me, hopefully all goes well.


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