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We are using domain.com instead of domain.local for our domain name on the Windows Server 2008r2 box. We are hosting email the website to domain.com offsite and now... we cannot connect to the server internally.

Emails appear to be coming in for now, but the website will not load.

Shouldn't we be using domain.local instead of domain.com? What is the quickest fix for this? Do I need to teardown the entire domain to make a change to .local?

Thanks guys.

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  • "What is the quickest fix for this?" - setup split-dns...not recommended, but if you are already setup, it isn't that big of a deal...just not ideal.
    – TheCleaner
    Nov 18, 2013 at 23:39
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    Never use .local or any other made up TLD
    – MDMarra
    Nov 18, 2013 at 23:47

3 Answers 3

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Don't act panicky to begin with.

Even though it certainly is not the most convenient setup (it's a royal pain to be frank), using your registered domain internally as well as externally is certainly possible. Though like most admins I wouldn't recommend it.

First thing would be to check if it's just a connectivity thing or if the server is having more trouble than that. Connect by using ip instead of name (odds are it's a dns problem, also check your clients dns settings). Connect using local console. Get into the machine any way possible and take it from there.

When you feel fairly safe and sound, well out of harms way, then contemplate changes like renames and stuff. If you do something like a domain rename without basic system stability, then it could get hairy.

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  • Any caching issues that would happen that can be disabled during testing?
    – CGSmith105
    Nov 19, 2013 at 0:39
  • That is a very broad question. But given the likeliness of dns being a culprit, the different dns caches come to mind. One does not usually look at turning them off, but rather clear them before each dns test. That includes the dns client and server caches, especially if the dns chain is distributed.
    – ErikE
    Nov 19, 2013 at 8:55
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If you're going to rename anything, rename your domain to "corp.domain.com" or "ad.domain.com" or something similar. Do not touch .local - it's a whole other world of problems.

But I would highly recommend as others have said - investigate the actual issue (probably DNS) rather than knee-jerk changing 100 things and hope one of them fixes it.

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Hire an admin?

He would know that Server 2008 R2 can handle domain renames in active directory.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738208(v=ws.10).aspx

can help you too - title: How Domain Rename Works

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