Last Update: Sep 24, 2024 | Published: May 02, 2013
As a critical part of your IT infrastructure, domain controllers (DC) should be assigned a static IP address so that they can be reliably discovered across the network. Sometimes it’s necessary to change the IP address assigned to a DC, for instance when there’s a change of IP addressing scheme on the local subnet, and this process can cause some concern for administrators due to the critical nature of DCs. However, assuming the DC is not hosting any other roles, changing the IP address shouldn’t pose any serious difficulties.
In this example, I’m going to change the IP address of a Windows Server 2012 DC. The server is additionally configured as the domain’s only DNS server.
Now the IP address has been changed, we need to empty the local DNS cache and register the DC’s new IP address in DNS.
DHCP settings will need to be changed if the DC is also a DNS server to make sure domain members pick up the DNS server’s new IP address. Don’t forget that you’ll either need to clear the local DNS cache on all member servers and clients joined to the domain or reboot them so that they resolve the new IP address to locate the DC.
If you have a distributed DNS infrastructure, you may need to wait for DNS information to replicate or force a replication. If present, subnet information in AD Sites and Services should be updated if the subnet addressing scheme is also modified. As with any major change you make to your production servers, you should test the procedure in a preproduction environment using servers with the same configuration as your production systems.