Join a Windows VM manually to a domain

This document explains how to join a Windows VM to a Managed Microsoft AD domain.

Before you begin

Before you begin, complete the following tasks:

Create a Managed Microsoft AD domain.
Create a Windows VM. When you create the VM, make sure that you complete the following tasks:
- Create the VM with a Windows version that Managed Microsoft AD supports.
- Create the VM in the project that hosts your Managed Microsoft AD domain. If your Managed Microsoft AD domain has Shared VPC as an authorized network, you can alternatively create the VM in any of the Shared VPC service projects.
- Create the VM on a VPC network that you have peered with the Managed Microsoft AD domain.

Before you join the Windows VM to the domain, connect to the Windows VM.

To join the VM to the domain, you need the following information:

The domain name of your Managed Microsoft AD domain.
The username and password of an account that has permissions to join a VM to the domain. By default, members of the Cloud Service Domain Join Accounts group have these permissions. For more information about the default groups that Managed Microsoft AD creates, see Groups.

You can join the Windows VM to the Managed Microsoft AD domain either using the Windows GUI or PowerShell.

For information about common issues that you can encounter while joining a VM manually to a domain, see Unable to join a VM manually to a domain.