Building a ConfigMgr Lab- Series Intro

In this series, I’ll be walking through how I’ve setup our Dev ConfigMgr Lab. There is one physical server running Server 2019 DataCenter Edition, then several Virtual Machines setup for the Lab itself. This post will give a basic overview, and links to the posts as they are added. At the time of this posting the main lab setup will be complete, but additional items and posts will continue to be added as we add additional features and services into the lab.

Post Layout:

• Lab & VM Setup
• Blog Post List

Assumptions

• You already know how to setup a virtual environment and virtual networking
• You already know how to install Windows Server on a VM

Lab Info & VMs

• The Lab will have a separate IP Subnet, completely separated from the host’s network.
• Domain Name: dev.recastsoftware.com

Virtual Machines

• Gateway Server
•  Name: GATEWAY.dev.recastsoftware.com
•  LAN 1: DHCP (External Network)
•  LAN 2: Static IP (Internal Lab Network) 192.168.1.1
•  Windows Roles: RAS [MS Docs]
•   C Drive = 100GB (1 Virtual Disk)
•   Memory = 1GB
•   CPU = 2 Cores
  ‍
• Domain Controller
•   Name: DC.dev.recastsoftware.com
•   LAN 1: Static IP (Internal Lab Network) 192.168.1.199
•  Windows Roles: Domain Controller, DHCP, DNS
•   C Drive = 100GB (1 Virtual Disk)
•   Memory = 2GB
•   CPU = 2 Cores‍
•  Additional Roles: Certificate Authority.

• ConfigMgr Server – Current Branch
•  Name: MEMCM.dev.recastsoftware.com
•  LAN 1: Static IP (Internal Lab Network) 192.168.1.200
•   C Drive = 100GB (1 Virtual Disk)
•   D Drive = 50GB (1 Virtual Disk) Used for SQL Database
•  E Drive = 500GB (1 Virtual Disk) Used for DP Content Source Server
•  Memory = 8GB
•  CPU = 4 Cores

• ConfigMgr Server – Tech Preview
•  Name: MEMCMTP.dev.recastsoftware.com
•  LAN 1: Static IP (Internal Lab Network) 192.168.1.201
•   C Drive = 100GB (1 Virtual Disk)
•   D Drive = 50GB (1 Virtual Disk) Used for SQL Database
•  E Drive = 200GB (1 Virtual Disk) Used for DP Content
•  Memory = 4GB
•  CPU = 4 Cores
  ‍
• Recast Management Server
•   Name: RecastMS.dev.recastsoftware.com
•  LAN 1: Static IP (Internal Lab Network) 192.168.1.3
•   C Drive = 100GB (1 Virtual Disk)
•  Memory = 2GB

Active Directory Accounts

• Configuration Manager Admin (CMAdmin)
• Network Access (CM_NA)
• Domain Join (CM_DJ)
• Workstation Client Push Account (CM_CP_Workstations)
• Server Client Push Account (CM_CP_Servers)
• Several Co-Workers (Mark, Bryan, Chris..)

Active Directory Groups

• CM_Servers
• CM_Admins
• SQL_Admins
• Server_LocalAdmins
• Workstation_LocalAdmins
• CM_App_DeployUsers (Contains the Co Worker Users, used as my )
• Certificate Admins (Allows users to enroll in the Web Server we’ll set up)
• Web Server Cert Enrollment (Contains any Webservers)

Blog Post List

Series Introduction – Building a CM Lab from Scratch

1. Domain Controller – Setting up your Domain Controller
2. Gateway Virtual Machine – Creating a Router for your Lab using Windows Server
3. Certificate Authority – On Domain Controller [Optional]
4. ConfigMgr Server Pre-Reqs (Windows Features)
5. Configuration Settings (AD & GPOs)
6. Source Server (File Share)
7. ConfigMgr SQL Install
8. ConfigMgr Install
9. ConfigMgr Basic Settings
10. ConfigMgr Collections & App Deployment
11. ConfigMgr OSD
12. ConfigMgr Reporting Services

Future Posts

• Software Updates
• Endpoint Protection
• Something Cloud related…