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5.2 Build DC01 and install Windows Server

You've done this once already with practice01 in Module 3, so the VM part will feel familiar. The install itself has one screen where beginners reliably take the wrong option, and it's flagged below.

Create the VM​

New virtual machine, pointed at the Windows Server evaluation ISO you collected in lesson 3.3:

  • Name and location: DC01, in C:\VMs\DC01, per the folder rules in 3.3.
  • RAM: 3 GB. Windows Server with a desktop is not shy, and this machine runs for the rest of the course. If you have memory to spare, 4 GB makes the graphical consoles noticeably smoother; 3 GB is the figure the Tier 1 budget in lesson 0.3 is built on.
  • CPU: 2 cores.
  • Disk: 60 GB, grow-as-used. Windows plus updates plus the directory will not fill this, and running out of disk on a domain controller is a bad day.
  • Network: your lab LAN. Tier 1, that's the NAT network you reconfigured in 4.3. Tier 2, that's the host-only segment behind FW01. Either way this machine goes on 10.10.10.0/24.
  • If the wizard offers to install Windows automatically for you, decline it, exactly as in Module 3. You want to see the screens.

Install it​

Boot the VM. You may need to press a key quickly when it says "press any key to boot from CD"; if you miss it, the VM will fail to boot and you simply reset it and try again. Nothing is broken.

Then walk the installer:

  1. Language, time, keyboard: yours. Next, then Install now.
  2. Choose the edition. This is the screen that catches people. You will be offered several options, and the difference that matters is whether the name includes "(Desktop Experience)".
    • Take the Desktop Experience option, on either Standard or Datacenter. This gives you the familiar graphical Windows you can click around in.
    • The options without Desktop Experience are Server Core: no desktop, no Server Manager, a command prompt and nothing else. Server Core is a perfectly good production choice and a miserable first-domain-controller experience. If you install it by accident you cannot add the desktop later; you reinstall.
    • Standard versus Datacenter makes no practical difference to this lab. Take Standard.
  3. Accept the licence terms.
  4. Choose Custom: Install Windows only. The "Upgrade" option is for existing installs and will get you nowhere on an empty disk.
  5. Select the single unallocated disk and continue. Windows creates its own partitions.
  6. Wait. This takes a while and reboots itself on the way through.
  7. When it asks, set a password for the local Administrator account. It has to satisfy complexity rules, so a short simple one will be rejected. Use something you'll type often and write it in your journal; a lab password you can't remember costs you a rebuild.

Log in. You'll land on a desktop with Server Manager opening by itself, which is the console you'll use for the next few lessons.

VirtualBox difference

Same install, and one setting worth checking first: in Settings > System, make sure Enable EFI matches how you intend to boot. VirtualBox defaults vary by version, and a Windows Server ISO that boots on one setting may not on the other. If the installer never appears, that switch is the first thing to try.

Give it working hands​

Two small quality-of-life steps that pay for themselves immediately.

Install the guest tools. In VMware that's VM > Install VMware Tools, which mounts a virtual disc inside the guest; open it and run the installer. In VirtualBox it's Devices > Insert Guest Additions CD image. These give you a properly sized screen, a mouse that moves between host and guest without being trapped, and copy-paste. Reboot when it asks.

Find PowerShell. Right-click the Start button and choose the Windows PowerShell or Terminal entry marked (Admin). From here to the end of the course you'll spend real time in this window, so if you read lesson 2.1 without a Windows machine to try it on, go back and skim its "Running PowerShell" section now: running commands one at a time, what the backtick at the end of a line means, and how to escape the >> prompt when a command isn't finished. Ten minutes there saves an hour of confusion here.

Check it responds:

# Which Windows is this, and which build? Useful in every support
# conversation you will ever have.
Get-ComputerInfo -Property WindowsProductName, OsVersion, OsBuildNumber

The machine now exists. It has the wrong name, the wrong address, and a clock running down. Lesson 5.3 fixes all three, and every one of them has to happen before the promotion in 5.4, because changing them afterwards is genuinely painful.