Creating and joining a domain in VM

[core2kid]

Let me start off my saying that i'm fairly new to this and I'm trying it myself so we might need to drop to basics.

So I'm trying to set up a VM with Server 2012 R2 as a domain controller and then have a Win7 Pro VM connect to it.
First off, both VMs are set up with an internal network in the VM on 10.0.2.0/24. Both VMs can access the internet.

In Server 2012, I added the Active Directory Domain Services and DNS. Once that was done, I promoted the server to a domain controller using the domain name as "vm.loc". Currently both VMs are on DHCP (this is where I'm lost).

Now my question is as follows. I can set up a static IP on the server, lets say 10.0.2.5. Would this mean that the primary DNS would be the default gateway at 10.0.2.1?

Now onto the Win7 VM, if the IP is set to DHCP however the primary DNS points to the server's DNS, wouldn't they both be able to ping through vm.loc vs the static IP of the server?

 

[simas]

Are you planning for this server to be the only DC in you domain? General recommendations is to use domain controller as DNS and DHCP for machines in you domain ( Microsoft best practice analyzer would complain if you have it configured as anything other than that including using secondary public DNS on workstation in the domain)

I use win 2012 essentials with server holding both dhcp and dons roles and clients get to go to the server. On server itself my pfsense firewall is configured as "router" when you define DHCP scope/rules