Windows Server 2016 Cookbook

Pre-staging a computer account in Active Directory

Joining computers to your domain is going to be a very normal task for any IT professional, enough that all of you are probably familiar with the process of doing so. What you may not realize, though, is that when you join computers or servers to your domain, they get lumped automatically into a generic Computers container inside AD. Sometimes this doesn't present any problem at all and all of your machines can reside inside this Computers container folder forever. Most of the time, however, organizations will set up policies that filter down into the Computers container automatically. When this is the case, these policies and settings will immediately apply to all computers that you join to your ...