QNAP NAS Community Forum

Our club has an old windows server running SBS2011 which is no longer supported by Microsoft and the server is now 10 years old.

We've installed a new Qnap and are moving all the files from the server to the NAS.

The question is - if we want to get rid of the server, which is running DHCP, the local domain DNS and active directory, do we actually need to keep AD or just use local users on the qnap?

I know the QNAP has a domain contoller feature so if we want to keep the AD can this be easily moved to the NAS?

Are their any benefits in using the QNAP for DHCP or is this better moved to our router?

TIA

Felix

Every time ive done Window server migrations i always re-create the domain manually. Ive done 100's of them...

Really the question is, are you only using the domain for file sharing or did you use Exchange. For a domain to work you have to have DNS, ive never used QNAP Domain Controller for anything Windows, Windows does store to interesting data in the active Directory, so it being labeled a "domain controller" is no where near simular really.

You could use the PCs to log in locally, then just say username / passwords to access the shares on the PC from the NAS (no need for a domain), just use the local users inside the NAS. ive had minor issues with Windows 10 generation but it would work as expected.

Microsoft Domain leveraged LDAP and was used to allow users, hardware and services to all store information in that LDAP directory, it used DNS to find each branch of the LDAP directory as required. Exchange would store its ActiveSync details in there, so its unlikely QNAP domain would totally replace Microsoft, ive not tested a PC to see if it can "join" a QNAP domain.

Way before QNAPO had its own Domain (LDAP) service, i had used them to join another domain and that did work well (going back 7-10 years).