How do I login once I promote my Windows Server 2012 to domain controller in my Amazon VPC?

Question

I am following this guide: http://d36cz9buwru1tt.cloudfront.net/pdf/EC2_AD_How_to.pdf to setup my domain controller. I get AD installed correctly, but when I do the promotion to DC, the server restarts and when I try to access it, I am unable to login using any of the local system accounts.

I even created my own separate user account, but that did not help. I made sure to disable the amazon settings for renaming the machine, the machine has a static ip and has been renamed.

Answer 1

The local Administrator account becomes the domain Administrator account when you create a new domain. Also, when you install Active Directory, it removes any local accounts

You should be able to login with your administrator account using the <accountname>@domain.com or DOMAIN\<accountname forms.

See also: Local user accounts have disappeared after installing Active Directory and running dcpromo

Answer 2

Domain controllers don't have local user accounts. When you ran DCPROMO you were prompted to provide a password for the domain Administrator account. You should log on with that username and password.

If simply providing the Administrator name doesn't work when logging in then prepend that username with the domain name:

domain\username

YourActiveDirectoryDomainName\Administrator