Setting up my first AD that i’ll be using for vmware horizonview, was curious if anyone had any tips or best practices for domain naming and what not for a nearly total newb.
so far i just grabbed a top result on Google
https://www.varonis.com/blog/active-directory-domain-naming-best-practices/
Seems like reasonable advice to me. A long time ago I once created an AD server in my lab for private internal use only, forgot about it, changed some network switches around (which allowed traffic out) and then wondered WTF was going on with my labs IP ranges. Turns out I’d picked a name that someone else had registered externally and some automatic stuff happened. For a while they had less IP addresses available 
I have a domain name (.net), if i use that, do i have to do anything to keep out of public reach block it off via firewall?
was kind of wondering why i can’t do local.myname.net
Basically yes, whilst at a basic level your NAT router will stop it being presented on your public IP address (unless you set up port forwarding) no one will connect to you, but if someone else has that domain registered and you allow the AD server access to the internet you will run into issues.
This blog touches on using the same internal/external AD name: http://www.itgeared.com/articles/1005-active-directory-domain-name/
BTW - I am very rusty at AD stuff these days. Some of the other members of the forum know way more 
do you know what net bios is all about?
i found this: https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Active_Directory_Naming_FAQ#NetBIOS_Names
but, not sure on the consequences of the naming scheme i should choose, or even recommended naming scheme if there is one?
EDIT: actually above was decent read!