AD password maxed out at 16 char

One of my client have this issue where we can't create password longer than 16 chars. I just found this out because we switched to using long passwords for all our client domain admins. I have been unable to find any information on web searches other than Azure having this same limit at one point. I don't see the server connected to Azure, but was wondering if it some how propagated to the server and how we can remove that cap.

I checked the domain level and it was on 2003, so I raised it to 2012R2. Restarted and no difference. Any help would be great, Thanks.

Solution 1:

So we just found out that apparently there is such thing as Windows Server 2012 R2 "Essentials" version. This version apparently is created with Azure built in, so it's subject to the 16char limit that Azure had back then. We have looked around and apparently even though Azure has lifted that limit, there is no way for the Essentials version to by-pass it... So kind of an answer without a solution.