Home Lab Setup with Virtual Box and Active Directory

Overview

This project documents the setup and configuration of a home lab environment using Virtual Box, focusing on creating a simulated network infrastructure with Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 virtual machines. The primary goal is to replicate real-world scenarios and gain hands-on experience in areas such as virtualization, network administration, and Active Directory management.

Key Steps

1. Installing tools

• Downloaded and installed Virtual Box for virtualization.
• Downloaded Windows 10 ISO and Windows Server 2019 ISO.

2. Virtual Box Setup

• Created a new virtual machine named 'DC' to act as the domain controller. This machine will have Windows Server 2019 installed.
• Created a new virtual machine named 'CLIENT1' to act as a client machine. This machine will have Windows 10 Pro installed.

3. Setup IP Addressing

• As shown in the network graph, the domain controller will have two network adapters: one connecting to my home internet ('INTERNET') and one being an internal network ('INTERNAL') that client machines will connect to.
• Identified my home network in adapter options and renamed it to 'INTERNET'. The other adapter is renamed to 'INTERNAL'.
• Went into the IPv4 properties of the internal network and assigned it the IP of 172.16.0.1, a mask of 255.255.255.0, and a DNS of 127.0.0.1 (loopback address).

4. Active Directory Domain Services

• Installed Active Directory Domain Services via Server Manager.
• In the configuration wizard, added a new forest, naming it 'mydomain.com'.
• These steps upgraded this virtual machine into the domain controller.

5. Active Directory Users and Computers

• Created a new organizational unit to create a new administrator account.
• Entered the properties of this new user, making it a member of 'Domain Admins'.
• Signed out and signed into the newly created domain admin account.

6. Configuring remote access and DHCP server.

(This allows our windows 10 client to be on the private internal network but still acesss the internet via the domain controller.)

• Installed Remote Access via Server Manager, ensuring to select the routing service to be installed.
• Configured routing and remote access and installed NAT (Network Address Translation) to use my home network to access the internet.
• Installed DHCP via Server Manager, allowing clients on the network to automatically get their IP address.
• Created a new scope to give IPs to clients in a specified range (172.16.0.100-200).

7. Powershell script for creating users

• Thanks to Josh Madakor for this public script available from his GitHub
• Opened an elevated PowerShell, navigated to the unzipped folder containing the script.
• Ran the script creating ~1000 users in a organized unit named '_USERS' simulating a corporate enviorment.

8. Onboarding the client machine

• In the Virtual Box settings for the client machine set the network to 'internal network'

• Started up the machine, ran ipconfig, and pinged a website in Command Prompt to ensure our network properties check out.

• Headed into system properties on the client machine to change the machine's domain to 'mydomain.com' and signed in with an account created earlier.

• In the DHCP - Address Leases on the DC machine, we'll see the address lease of the newly connected client machine.

  

• Along with the computer name in Active Directory Users and Computers - Computers