How to make computer alias discoverable?

Question

I am replacing an old server 2008r2 system with a new windows 2016 server but am having problems with computer visibility on the local network.

My file server has a DNS alias which doesn't appear as a computer in windows explorer - except on the DC.

I finally got the other network computers visible after setting a GPO to start the necessary services to make them discoverable on client machines (Function Discovery Resource Publication, SSDP Discovery, UPnP Device Host), but this doesn't seem to cover the alias. Windows firewall has also been configured to allow network discovery.

All clients do have access to the server via the alias (files can be reached by typing in the path using the alias name) but it just doesn't appear as a Computer in the Network section of explorer.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Computer discovery used to depend on NetBIOS, rather than DNS. This means you need to add a NetBIOS alias to the target computer. You can do that via two means:

• use NETDOM to add a secondary computer name: For example: NETDOM COMPUTERNAME original /ADD alias.contoso.local

• directly edit the windows registry: you can add another NetBIOS name in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters section of the Windows registry by adding the OptionalNames string value

That said, I had a similar problem some months ago and I was out of luck with Windows 2016. While I did not investigate thoroughly, it seems that Windows 2016 kind of ignore NetBIOS aliases.