Making an Active Directory Lab

date

Apr 11, 2023

slug

ad-lab

author

status

Public

Pre-Setup

Before beginning anything in this lab, the first step was to create a plan on how this could be done and what we actually wanted to do with it. As Tony V. and I had just collaborated on setting up the real Linux lab, we then decided that the next step was to setup a virtualized Windows Active Directory lab.

Building the “Network”

To begin setting up the lab, we installed the Proxmox operating system onto three different computers to be the hubs (known as pve’s in the software) that our virtualized machines would run off of. Once it was all setup, we joined all of the separate computers into one big network (known as a cluster), so we could have three times the resources to use in one place.

The installation process of all of these machines was long, tedious, and took way longer than I ever expected. The time-consuming void that was this lab began when our teacher, the organizer of the lab itself, told us that we needed to host thirty machines, requiring thirty machines to be configured, installed, and then setup so the students could use them later on.

Painstakingly, I worked to individually create, install, and then configure fourteen domain controllers and fourteen workstations by configuring the setup in Proxmox, then installing Windows, then configuring certain custom network drivers we installed. Once the lab was completed, we test drove it with two students and ran them through how to do it by creating custom Proxmox users that only had permissions for the two VMs they were allocated, then using our six-page documentation to guide them through the experience and interjecting went needed. This test went better than expected, but unfortunately, we never got to use it as experience for the competition.

Conclusion

Overall, this experience, although it took me multiple days to complete (a couple days setting up machines, and at least four more hours writing thorough documentation), this experience was very useful, fun, and insightful. I learned how to configure a network to properly use Active Directory, how to setup different machines on Proxmox, and how to troubleshoot various issues all the different softwares brought me.