This is second part of PART 1 : INSTALL ACTIVE DIRECTORY DOMAIN CONTROLLER ON VMWARE WORKSTATION, I configured Windows Server 2012 R2, and installed only Active Directory Domain Services role, Now it should be promoted to domain controller. Click Promote this server to a domain controller when you finished installing role or close it and from server manager click on upper right side flag icon with yellow warning sign, you can find Promote this server to a domain controller here as well.
POWERSHELL: INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING ACTIVE DIRECTORY
DSC (DESIRED STATE CONFIGURATION) : DEPLOYING ACTIVE DIRECTORY
Active directory deployment wizard will start. As this our first domain controller choose Add a new forest. and give some domain name in Root Domain Name, In my case it is vCloud-lab.com. Some time I use vcloud.lab.
Next is Forest functional level, domain functional level keep them default, DNS is checked by default and install it. Type the directory service restore mode (DSRM) password, which will be helpful if you want to POC for recovering deleted items or restoring AD database and other offline tasks.
Nothing much to configure on next 2 screens,
"A delegation to the dns server cannot be created because the authorative parent zone cannot be found". First screen warning is expected and can be ignored safely as it didn't find any DNS server role on the server. In the Second Screen configuration wizard has automatically take NetBIOS domain name from we configured root domain name. It is advised to not change NetBIOS name assigned to this domain keep it default, Change only if required and necessary.
Next screen is about AD database and logs, group policy objects path location, currently I have only single drive and will go with default location, C:\windows\NTDS and C:\windows\sysvol.
Now I have provided my all the inputs about domain controller, it will show summary and next screen is Prerequisites checks to validate server before installing ADDS on this computer. If you check on the below Prerequisites Check you will see, All the prerequisite checks passed successfully, click install to begin installation. We are good to go click install in the end Computer will restart automatically once it is promoted to domain controller. You can view on the next installation screen live what is going on, it is installing all the required components.
On the results screen, I can see This server was successfully configured as a domain controller. and Server restarts automatically. Here AD installation and configuration complete, next will be user, OU, computer account creation which will be covered in some other blog.