How to Join a Nano Server 2016 to a Domain Offline Mode via PowerShell

How to Join a Nano Server 2016 to a Domain Offline Mode via PowerShell

In this post I will cover the step by step of joining an already deployed non-domain joined Nano Server.

 

Non-domain joined Nano Server

Step by Step

1. Make sure you have access to the Nano Server via PowerShell
2. Create a offline Join File
3. Copy the file to the Nano Server
4. Run the offline join command line

Creating the Offline Join file

Open PowerShell as admin and run the following commands:
#Joining a Nano Server to a domain offline mode
$Domain=’YourDomain’
$Computername=’NanoServerName’
$Filename=’domainjoin.djoin’
Djoin.exe /Provision /Domain $Domain /Machine $Computername /Savefile $Filename

Successfully created

Important: The file will be placed on C:\Windows\System32 if you didn't assigned a path.

Copy the File to the Nano Server using explorer (in my case I copied to C:\SysMgr)

Connect the Nano server

Run the offline join command line to join the Nano Server to the domain

On the already opened session run the following command:
Djoin.exe /RequestODJ /loadfile C:\Windows\setup\scripts\domainjoin.djoin /windowspath c:\windows /localos

Restart (Ctl+F6) the Nano Server and then validate the Server is joined and also accessible via the server manager console.




That's it! you have now joined your Nano Server to a domain.