{"id":460,"date":"2021-08-01T22:42:27","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T22:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/?p=460"},"modified":"2021-08-01T23:18:38","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T23:18:38","slug":"lab-ad-new-domain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/08\/01\/lab-ad-new-domain\/","title":{"rendered":"Lab: AD: New Domain"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought it would be useful to have an Active Directory lab environment set up for testing different scenarios. This series will look at setting up a fully functioning Active Directory domain using headless servers. The rationale for that is most people don’t have servers lying around to be used for test\/dev environments. Chances are, all most people will have is 1 physical machine, which may even be their main PC.<\/p>\n

So, let’s get started.<\/p>\n

Windows Server 2019 is the current standard and with a 180 day eval, it will do nicely. The ISO is available here<\/a>. Before you can download it you have to answer some questions…
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Click Continue<\/strong>, select your language and then Download. <\/strong>Or use this direct download link<\/a><\/p>\n

Once the ISO has downloaded, Launch VirtualBox, click on the Machine <\/strong>menu and then New…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Enter a Name<\/strong>, choose a folder location to store the VM files, ensure Microsoft Windows <\/strong>is selected as the Type<\/strong>, ensure Version<\/strong> is Windows 2019 (64-bit)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Click Next<\/strong>, Select 750MB for RAM and click Next. <\/strong>If you enter anything less then you will receive an error message about available memory for RAMDISK when you try to boot the machine.<\/p>\n

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Select Create a virtual hard disk now<\/strong> and click Create<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Keep the default selection of VDI<\/strong> and click Next<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Keep the default selection of Dynamically allocated<\/strong> and click Next<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Set your desired location for the virtual disk files, and set the Size<\/strong> to 32GB<\/strong>. Don’t worry, it won’t take up 32GB, that’s just the maximum that VirtualBox will allow the file to grow to. It needs to pretend to be that size so that Windows will install without complaint. Click Create<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Ensure the newly defined machine is selected and then click Settings<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Select Storage <\/strong>from the left hand side, then the Empty<\/strong> CD icon under the Controller: SATA<\/strong> in the middle pane. Click the CD icon on the far right hand side and select Choose a disk file…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Select the Server 2019 ISO and click Open<\/strong>. Click OK<\/strong> to finish editing the settings.<\/p>\n

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Ensure the new machine is selected and click Start<\/strong><\/p>\n

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When the machine starts for the first time it will prompt for boot media. This should already be populated, so click Start<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Select your desired locale settings and click Next<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Click Install Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Select either Standard<\/strong> or Datacenter <\/strong>edition, but do not choose the options with Desktop Experience <\/strong><\/em>in the name. Click Next<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Accept the license terms and click Next<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Choose Custom<\/strong><\/p>\n

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If you had multiple disks or want a specific partition layout, create it here. Making no changes and clicking Next <\/strong>will use the whole disk<\/p>\n

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The installer then follows it’s normal process and reboots when complete.<\/p>\n

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Once the server is online your greeted with a ctrl-alt-del screen. You can input ctrl-alt-del in VirtualBox either from the input menu or via Host+Del (Host is normally right-ctrl)<\/p>\n

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Enter new credentials for your Administrator account, confirm, and then click OK <\/strong>on the confirmation prompt<\/p>\n

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You will now be presented with an administrative command prompt.<\/p>\n

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Running the command sconfig<\/strong><\/em> will bring you to an interactive setup menu. From here we are going to change the computer name, set a static IP and reboot<\/p>\n

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Press 8<\/strong> and then Enter <\/strong>to bring up the network configuration<\/p>\n

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Press 1 <\/strong>and then Enter <\/strong>to set the Network Adapter Address. Use whatever static IP you have available, or if unsure just use the DHCP information outputted at the top of the window.<\/p>\n

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Press 2 <\/strong>and then Enter <\/strong>to configure DNS. Enter 127.0.0.1 <\/strong>as the primary and 8.8.8.8<\/strong> as the secondary. This will mean the server will use itself as it’s primary DNS server and Google as its secondary. When you’re finished, press 4\u00a0<\/strong>and Enter <\/strong>to return to the main\u00a0sconfig<\/strong><\/em> menu.<\/p>\n

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Press 2 <\/strong>and Enter<\/strong> to enter the Computer Name configuration. Enter the new name and press Enter<\/strong>. You’ll be prompted for a password before the name change completes. Once done enter 13<\/strong> and Enter<\/strong> to reboot<\/p>\n

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When the server comes back online, log in. It’s now time to create our domain. First thing we need is the Feature. Enter the command powershell <\/strong><\/em>to enter a powershell session and then run Install-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services<\/code><\/p>\n

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Once complete we are going to create our domain. The full list of parameters for this command are available here. The command is:<\/p>\n

Install-ADDSForest -DomainMode 7 -DomainName goaway.com -DomainNetbiosName ga -ForestMode 7 <\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Install-ADDSForest<\/td>\ncmdlet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
-DomainMode 7<\/td>\nDomain functional level Serer 2016<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
-DomainName goaway.com<\/td>\nSets the domain name to goaway.com<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
-DomainNetbiosName ga<\/td>\nSets the NetBios name (or shortname) to ga<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
-ForestMode 7<\/td>\nSets the forest level to Server 2016<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Press A <\/strong>and Enter <\/strong>to answer Yes to all questions for the domain creation<\/p>\n

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The forest will now be created and your server configured as the first Domain Controller. There will be some warnings present during this process, which can be safely ignored<\/p>\n

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When complete, the server will reboot<\/p>\n

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When the server comes back up and you go to login, you’ll notice you are now being prompted for your domain administrator credentials.<\/p>\n

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Now we have succesfully created a domain and we have our first domain controller. The next thing to do is free up some resources. Use sconfig <\/strong><\/em>to shut the server down and change it’s memory configuration down to 350MB. You could attempt to go lower than this, but server performance begins to suffer greatly when doing so.<\/p>\n

That’s it for the first part of this series. Next we will look at some common configuration like new domain admins, adding a secondary DC and configuring DHCP<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought it would be useful to have an Active Directory lab environment set up for testing different scenarios. This series will look at setting up a fully functioning Active Directory domain using headless servers. The rationale for that is most people don’t have servers lying around to be used for test\/dev environments. Chances are, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soutarsit.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}