Hyper-V: Domain membership is recommended for servers running Hyper-V

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012

This topic is intended to address a specific issue identified by a Best Practices Analyzer scan. You should apply the information in this topic only to computers that have had the Hyper-V Best Practices Analyzer run against them and are experiencing the issue addressed by this topic. For more information about best practices and scans, see Best Practices Analyzer.

Operating System	Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2008 R2
Product/Feature	Hyper-V
Severity	Warning
Category	Configuration

Issue

This server is a member of a workgroup.

Impact

There is no central management for this server.

Joining this computer to the domain makes it possible to centralize the management of policies for identity, security, and auditing.

Resolution

If you have a domain environment available, join this server to that domain.

To join a computer to a domain, you must be logged on to the computer with the local Administrator account—or, if you are logged on to the computer with a user account that does not have local computer administrative credentials, you must provide the credentials for the local Administrator account during the process of joining the computer to the domain. In addition, you must have a user account in the domain to which you want to join the computer. During the process of joining the computer to the domain, you will be prompted for your domain account credentials (user name and password).

Important

We recommend that you review the workloads running in the virtual machines on this computer to determine whether there are security implications of joining this computer to a domain. If any of the virtual machines are virtualized domain controllers, see Planning Considerations for Virtualized Domain Controllers (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190192).

For instructions, see Join the Computer to the Domain (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190193).