An interesting blog was published titled, “How to skip domain joining during client deployment in a Windows Server 2012 Essentials network” – http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserveressentials/thread/aa40963c-7235-40f7-85f5-8f8d030a7c13
To do this, you need to edit a registry key on the client computer.
- On your client computer, open an elevated command prompt.
- Type the following:
reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Server\ClientDeployment” /v SkipDomainJoin /t REG_DWORD /d 1
There may be situations where you wish to connect a PC to the Windows Server 2012 Essentials server, but leave the PC off the domain. It may be that this is a personal PC or laptop, but the user requires the Client Backup functionality without adding the laptop to the corporate domain. Another possibility may be the existence of a larger +25 CAL domain, where the Essentials server is to be a client backup server only. At this moment, Windows Storage Server 2008R2 Essentials can be used for this purpose. However, no Windows Server 2012 edition of this server has been announced.