I have a few questions about the above, even though its not technical, but more of background information on some of the topics. I know there is alot of experts around here, so here goes. 1. Is Active Directory and a domain the same thing? in the sense of can you have a domain, without Active Directory, or have Active Directory without a domain? 2. When it comes to creating a domain/domain name, i see people putting in things like - my.company.com, where does the whole .com part come in, why .com? and can it be made something else, like my.company.whateva? or *must* it end in .com? 3. OK, so we make it .com, does this have any relation to the internet? can i make my internal domain at home google.com? or would it pick up there is already a internet domain with the same name and error out? 4. Lastly, DNS is needed in a domain, so currently a person that does not have a domain, has internet, and say they use google's DNS as their primary DNS - 8.8.8.8, now they get a domain, and their DomainController is now their DNS server, say ip is 192.168.1.10, would they still need to use 8.8.8.8 for internet DNS, is the domain DNS and internet DNS 2 different things? or would the internal DNS, replace the DNS i put in my network settings to allow my pc to get to the internet? I hope what i have asked makes sense, it is late. Thanks for taking the time to assist a n00bie
Active Directory is a M$ creation. A Domain is a grouping of objects. M$ have used the word Domain to group all objects such as Users, Computers and resources into a group called the Domain. This M$ Domain is supported by the functionality that Active Directory provides. Therefore for M$ Domain and Active Directory are essentially the same thing and you cannot have one without the other. M$ decided to tightly integrate DNS into Active Directory so this is where the Internet style naming comes from. You can change the .com to anything you like. This Domain .com or whatever has very little to do with the internet. You wouldn't want your Active Directory exposed to the public in any case. Because Active Directoy and DNS are tightly integrated you will have to have DNS. You can still use other DNS servers by using DNS Forwarders within your Domain DNS. In this case all computers use the Domain DNS and the Domain DNS forwards requests outside of it's Domain (myOrg.com) to the Forwarders you have defined. And a little Advice. Active Directory and DNS can be unforgiving. Keep things as simple as possible.