In my environments I'm finding the 15 character limit for naming a server, well, limiting. It's not enough and is causing needless grief, not to mention sniggering from the *nix side of the business. This point forward I am running Server 2008 R2 exclusively. Is there any real reason I shouldn't disable WINS and NetBIOS and use as many characters as I need in server names?

Disabling WINS/Netbios will do away with network neighborhood and computer browsing. Also some parts of Exchange require netbios. Read this link for more information, there are some really good points made here. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverNIS/thread/5c461ccb-2585-4100-a40c-cab2058ce8f4

Hello Andrew, I never run WINS; I uninstall it, but I do keep NetBIOS. Miguel Miguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

So is the short answer I'm stuck with 15 character limits for the forseeable future?

Hello, A lot of applications use NetBIOS for resolution, that's why I do not disable it. Do an inventory and see if you really need it. I was just speaking in general but your LAN may be fine without it. MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase Sharepoint Site

Is there any real reason I shouldn't disable WINS and NetBIOS and use as many characters as I need in server names? So is the short answer I'm stuck with 15 character limits for the forseeable future? You've not mentioned any products thats that specifically use WINS/Netbios names. Because of that you are only stuck to the extent you are unwilling or unable to make these determinations for yourself. Ultimately, only you can make this determination, research every application, perform testing, etc. No one on these forums can do that for you. We can only provide advice and knowledge about known applications or issues....which is essentiall all you have asked us to provide.

The two main reasons for having WINS is for down-level clients (pre-Windows 2000 systems) and NetBIOS dependent applications. As others have indicated, Exchange is a WINS lover. Its not that easy to get turned off on established, complex networks. It requires thorough testing. If your business can accept the risk, simply disabling the services on your WINS servers will result in the answer you are looking for. I would take this approach before uninstalling and re-configuring network services without thorough testing. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Hi Andrew, I agree with Gunner999 , Miguel and JM that to decide if should disable NetBIOS or WINS ,testing the applications that running in you environment first is more reasonable. If the applications which runs purely on NetBIOS, you don't have choice but enable it. If you don't have application which purely runs on NetBIOS but depends on single label name resolution, disable NetBIOS should be no problem, DNS and LLMNR could be better choices. DNS Technical Reference http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779926(WS.10).aspx Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb878128.aspx Thanks. Tiger Li TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks for the advice. So long as all normal server Windows functions keep working (who cares about computer browser / printer browsing in a server only env) I think I will be able to stipulate that we can't bring in programs that rely on NetBIOS or develop in house ones. Here goes, WINS/NetBIOS goodbye :)

Best of luck!Bill

OK so I've been playing with this in a test domain and it's been somewhat frustrating: Build a 2008 R2 VM, install the ADDS role and then disable NetBIOS. All of a sudden, server manager can't seem to use ADUC etc. ie --------------------------- Active Directory Domain Services --------------------------- The directory schema is not accessible because: An invalid directory pathname was passed For this reason, the New menu may be inaccurate, and extension snap-ins may not work properly. --------------------------- OK --------------------------- Joining servers to the domain: Changing the Primary Domain DNS name of this computer to "" failed. The name will remain "corp.mydomain.com". The error was: The specified server cannot perform the requested operation. So is NetBIOS actually required for AD to function correctly??

Personally i never had the need to disable netbios, it seems more trouble than its worth. However, after disabling netbios on each server I would reboot them just to make sure every service knows netbios is disabled from the start.

OK I've worked out the Server Manager issue, it is automatically trying to find the NetBIOS name. Changing the settings for those MMCs to hit the DNS make it work. I think this could almost be called a bug.

So another issue has cropped up: Computer Objects have a 15 character RDN within AD, not allowing me to join computers which have the first 15 characters of their name the same as another computer. Is the RDN length configurable?

In AD the attribute that would restrict this would be the SamAccountName attribute (SAM-Account-Name attribute). This is limited to 20 Characters not 15. Is the name longer than 20? That may be your issue. Its not possible to have a computer name longer than 19 character plus the ending $. If the length is between 15-19, the issue may be that the computer itself can only create an object with 15 characters, did you try manually pre-creating the computer account then joining the domain??? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/active-directory-maximum-limits-scalability(WS.10).aspx http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909264 You may want to re-post this as a new question, some other people may have experience doing this.

OK thanks will do.