Cannot Join Client Computer to Server Domain (Windows Server 2012 r2)?

Question

I'm having trouble with trying to join my client computer to the server domain. My client is Windows 7 Professional and the server domain OS is Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard. I tried the usual method of going to System-Change Settings-Change-and entering the domain name to join. However, I get the message saying:

An active directory domain controller (ad dc) for the domain sean.local could not be contacted. Ensure that the domain name is typed correctly.

I know for a fact that the domain name (sean.local) is correct. On my DC, I have Active Directory, DHCP and DNS installed. Its weird because I could ping the server IP just fine and get a response, but when I ping the domain name (sean.local) I do not get a response. I get a message saying:

Ping request could not find host sean.local. Please check the name and try again.

I think the issue I'm having with not being able to join the domain has something to deal with the DNS server. I will post the network configurations for both the client and the server domain and hopefully we could get this client to finally join the domain once and for all. Thank you everyone for your help, I appreciate it.

Both of these machines had their IP settings manually configured, not obtained automatically.

Client:

local: 
IP address: 10.0.0.7
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 10.0.0.1
Preferred DNS server: 10.0.0.1

Server:

IP address: 10.0.0.5
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 10.0.0.1
Preferred DNS server: 10.0.0.1

Solution

The servers DNS needs to point to itself, and the clients DNS needs to point to the server.

Servers DNS should be 10.0.0.5 (or 127.0.0.1)
Clients DNS should be 10.0.0.5

Comments

[Colyn1337]

Did you set the DC's network setting dns to "home"?

[Anonymous]

I tried what you recommended and it worked! May you explain to me more in depth in why the settings should be setup that way please? Thanks!

[Joe]

You tell me :). How do you want the client to locate sean.local on a public DNS server? You had DNS pointing to (what i assume is) a soho router which holds a public DNS entry. The client sends the DNS query to 10.0.0.1 which sends it out to its public DNS (e.g. 4.2.2.2), and they have no idea who sean.local is. in AD, DNS is the backbone. without proper DNS, absolutely nothing is going to work. On the DC, you should add forwarders to a public DNS server

[Lex]

The domain/DNS is on 10.0.0.5, when you set the client's IP to use 10.0.0.1, it doesn't resolve to anything at all.

[Joel Coel]

To supplement this: after setting the DNS on the server to 10.0.0.5/127.0.0.1, you'll want to make sure the DNS service on that machine as a working forwarder (it probably does, but you'll still want to check this). Even if it already has a working forwarder, you may want to set the preferred forwarder to your ISP's DNS or other preferred service such as 8.8.8.8.

[Anonymous]

Just curious, but why did you guys recommend 127.0.0.1 along with 10.0.0.5 instead of just recommending to use 10.0.0.5? Is there any difference between the two DNS servers or no?

[longneck]

If you have only one Active Directory server, the server should have 127.0.0.1 only for DNS. That way if you change the IP of the server or disconnect the NIC, Active Directory keeps working. If you have two servers, you set the first DNS to the IP of the other server, second DNS to 127.0.0.1. That way the servers always know about each other and replication can happen correctly.

[Dan]

I'm not sure why you posted that here - the poster was experiencing DNS issues which were resolved