This article is not part of the Building Microsoft System Center Cloud series but we need these DCs for our Hyper-V cluster that we are using in our Cloud series.

Hyper-V VM installation

In the previous article we discussed how to configure hardware for our first virtual machines that will be our Domain Controllers. Now we have to install them.

  • In the previous article I forgot to add the optical drive so please add it.
  • Change the boot order.
  • And install Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2.

Configure the new OS

Now we can continue with the standard steps.

  • Rename computer using Rename-Computer cmdlet (or in GUI if it is faster for you).
  • Format all additional disks that we added in the previous article. Let's make fun and do it in PowerShell.
Get-Disk | Sort-Object -Property Number | Select-Object -Skip 1 | Initialize-Disk -PassThru | New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume
  • I am sorry. I really like one liners. But I have to admit that I made a mistake for the first time. I did not use Sort-Object and I got ugly red error.
  • Assign IPv4 and IPv6.
Get-NetAdapter | New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 123.123.123.123 -PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway 123.123.123.1
Get-NetAdapter | New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress fd::1 -PrefixLength 64
  • PowerShell
  • Now we are ready to install Active Directory Domain Services and DNS.
Get-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services | Install-WindowsFeature -IncludeAllSubFeature
Get-WindowsFeature DNS | Install-WindowsFeature -IncludeAllSubFeature
  • PowerShell
  • Administration tools should be installed on your management server.
Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-AD-AdminCenter, RSAT-DNS-Server
  • PowerShell
  • And it is not bad idea to install the latest patches...
  • And of course do not forgot to disable the old stuff.
      • [ ] Enable LMHOSTS lookup
      • (o) Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP
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Part of the series

  1. Building Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual Domain Controller on Hyper-V host - Part 1 - Create and configure virtual machine
  2. Building Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual Domain Controller on Hyper-V host - Part 3 - Active Directory - Installation and basic configuration
  3. Building Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual Domain Controller on Hyper-V host - Part 4 - Advanced configuration
  4. Building Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual Domain Controller on Hyper-V host - Part 5 - DNS configuration