Quickstart: Creating a domain

This topic shows you how to create a domain with Managed Service for Microsoft Active Directory.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Account.



    Go to the project selector page


  4. Enable the Managed Microsoft AD, Cloud DNS, and Compute Engine APIs.

    Enable the APIs

  5. Create a new Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network to deploy your domain to, or use an existing one. Legacy networks are not supported. Take note of your VPC network's name. You need it for the domain creation process.

Gathering information

You need the following information to create your domain:

Creating the domain

After you complete the prerequisites and gather your domain information, you can create the domain.


  1. Go to the Managed Microsoft AD page in the Cloud Console.
    Go to the Managed Microsoft AD page

  2. Select Create New AD Domain.

  3. On the Create new domain page, enter the information you gathered.

    • Enter the Fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for your domain.
    • Under Network details, select your VPC network name from the list. Select OK.
    • Enter the CIDR Range for your domain controller.
    • Under Regions, select a region from the list to deploy the domain controller to.
    • Under Delegated Admin, you can enter an Admin name or use the default, setupadmin.
  4. Select Create domain.

It can take up to 60 minutes to create a domain. You'll receive a notification in Cloud Console when the creation is finished.


Run the following gcloud tool command. Replace the placeholder variables with the information you gathered.

gcloud active-directory domains create fully-qualified-domain-name \
--reserved-ip-range=cidr-range --region=region \

You receive the following response that indicates domain creation has started:

Create request issued for: fully-qualified-domain-name
Waiting for operation-1554140234884-5857b78a1a49e-02bc63a3-77e5c7ee to complete...

It can take up to 60 minutes to create a domain. The gcloud operation status updates when domain creation is complete.

Congratulations! You created a domain using Managed Service for Microsoft Active Directory. Note that you can repeat the process to create multiple independent domains in this same project.

What's next