LAB set-up question

vlakarmis

Hi there guys and girls,

I am wanting to set up a lab to learn how to set up 2 Domain Controllers and a client connection. I am just a bit lost when it comes to connecting the second DC to the first. I am using VMware workstation running 3 VMs 2 Server 2008 R2 and one Windows 7 Enterprise. The problem is when I try to find the second server in the Network and Sharing Center, only my physical pc shows up. How do I go about 'connecting' the two servers? I imagine in real life it would be either by ethernet cable or wirelessly but how to mimic that in the VM?

Another question: When creating a new forest and domain, can i just make up any domain name? for example would server1.dcd.local be valid?

cruwl

You connect them in the VMware workstation settings. They need to be on the same network you create in there. They need to be IPed correctly for the same network(in the VM) and should be able to ping each other(If the firewall is off).

You can creat what ever you want for the domain name. WHATEVERYOUWANT.local works just fine

ex: mylab.local

netsysllc

The servers need to be on the same network, your first Active Directory server should be the DNS server for the other server and the workstation. and yes dcd.local would be fine for the domain

wweboy

Go grab PFSense there is a virtual appliance you can easily stand up and then you set each box to use VMNET 5 as your internal network and the other interface is connected to your real network and uses it to get inet access and what not. Early on you'll setup all the machines with static IP addresses for example.

DC1

IP Address: 10.0.0.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 10.0.0.254

DC2 = .2

By default the ip is 192.168.1.0 or whatever and I"ve knocked out my real network by accident so besure to change the ip range to something different when you are in the console of the PFsense machine. Once you've got your Domain controllers setup you can setup DHCP feature and then set your client computer can get an IP address automatically and add it to your domain.

Hope this helps.