I have a well sorted home lab with 2x Windows Server 2016 machines and 2 Windows 10 Pro workstations. I dont want to run a domain, but I do want to simplify networking between all of the machines, in particular, discovery and sharing of account credentials.
I want to add all of the machines to one homegroup. How can I add the windows 2016 servers to a homegroup?
2 Answers
Simple. As long as you don't install and configure Active Directory, it will be in a homegroup already. The default is Workgroup I think, but you can simply change that by doing the following:
Right-Mouse click on the startmenu, then choose System.
Then on the right, it'll say Computer name, domain and work group settings.
Click the Change settings link on the right to change this so it matches whatever work group name you're using.
Also, make sure the IP address matches the rest of the network. By default, the ip address is set to get one from a DHCP server, so if your network has that (the router usually does that) then you're set.
You may need to change network discovery settings in order to be able to access the shares though... Not sure about that.
2Homegroups have been deprecated, so the nearest you can get is faking it by having local users on all machines with the same username and passwords. You're syncing that yourself, and I'm not 100% that this will work automatically since SMBv3 was hardened up.
