Windows Server Configuration

In this post I am going to walk through my process for setting up and configuring a simple windows server. In later steps, I plan to add another, non-gui, server and clients.

After installation, my first step was to add roles and features which is located at the top right under the Manage menu. The main feature I want to add is Active Directory Domain services, which will be located in the Server Roles menu of the installation wizard. Active Directory in a staple utility in many enterprises and this provides a great learning opportunity to test and experiment with its features.

My next step was to promote my server to a Domain Controller. This is an important step as the DC will act as a gatekeeper to authenticate if a particular user is authorized to access specific resources in said domain. This is important when needing to validate users and such on a network, which can include group policies, user credentials, and endpoint devices.

Additionally, I wanted to begin organizing my domain which needed to begin with creating a new forest. In a larger network, the forest would be the beginning of an organizational hierarchy within the Active Directory server. This forest model allows for lower level autonomy amongst different divisions underneath the forest level domain. These divisions will have some autonomy over their individual domains while the forest domain retains its higher level autonomy over the entire forest of domains. This is useful because it allows for divisional organization amongst many different departments within a large enterprise. In this case, I created a forest named cyber.local.

With this completed, the basic server is now online running Active Directory. Next steps will include adding a non-gui server and several clients to the server. Once these additions are made, I aim to configure DNS and start adding and managing AD objects to continue practicing and improving my skill set.