How to Learn Active Directory

I would like to learn how to deal with Active Directory. How can I go about it?

Was thinking of running Windows Server 2012 in a Virtual Machine.

Would this be a good way to go about it? If so, would VMWare Player 7.0 suffise or would I need VMWare Workstation?

I'm not looking to become an expert just yet but would like to get some hands on experience with AD.

Thanks.

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Comments

Rocket Impossible

I think you would need a little more than that. The thing about AD is you need something to populate it. Users, computers, groups, it's hard to get these things in a lab setting. But if you just want to look at the different tools and interfaces, what you suggested should be fine.

Essendon

Maybe try the virtual labs? There may be some of what Rocket Impossible referred to already setup > https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/bb467605.aspx

MTciscoguy

If you don't have the ability to add users and stations, you are going to struggle, I am lucky, I have over 10 computers in the house as well as two Dell blade servers, so I could really expand and play with all the things active directory requires to learn it. It is not something you just learn by setting it up, you actually need to learn how everything interacts with each other.

techfiend

I don't know with VMware player but with virtualbox you can build a pretty nice virtual lab by creating a few vm's and use bridged networks and put them on the same domain. For AD you should only need to run 2 vm's at a time but 3 or 4 would be nice. I'm not getting by very well with 3 vm's on 8GB of ram, have another 8GB on the way.

I've found certain microsoft virtual labs to be very buggy.