Resources

Building a CM Lab

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Series Intro
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Series Intro

In this series, I'll be walking through how I've setup our Dev ConfigMgr Lab. 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.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 1 – Domain Controller VM
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 1 – Domain Controller VM

This post will be going over creating the Domain Controller for the Lab. This will be the basic setup, we'll be revisiting the Domain Controller later when we need to extend the schema and start adding additional users and groups into the mix, but for now, we're just going to get it functional, with DNS & DHCP. This post is 99% pictures, not much text.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 2 – Gateway Virtual Machine (VM)
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 2 – Gateway Virtual Machine (VM)

If we have a lab and we want to keep it separate from rest of our environment, we need a gateway. You can do this with a linux VM, another physical router, or several other options. For our lab, we decided to use Microsoft Windows Server to be our gateway.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 3 – Certificate Authority
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 3 – Certificate Authority

This is a bonus, you can do everything you want in your lab without this feature, but guess what, if you're going to do anything that needs HTTPS, having your own Certificate Authority (CA) makes this so much slicker.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 4 – ConfigMgr Server Pre-Reqs
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 4 – ConfigMgr Server Pre-Reqs

This is the big one, this is our MEMCM server, so much is happening to setup this server it's going to take a few posts. This post is covering some basics, and the pre-reqs, we'll move into SQL & the actual CM Install in up coming posts.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 5 – Configuration Settings (AD / GPO)
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 5 – Configuration Settings (AD / GPO)

Along the way when you setup your lab, you'll need to create accounts, groups, gpos, and other things to make life easier. While you want to keep it fairly clean and lean, if you plan to keep this lab around awhile, you'll want a few of these setup:

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 6 – ConfigMgr Source Share
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 6 – ConfigMgr Source Share

This short post will explain how I've setup the Source Share on the Server. The Source Share is were all content sources for Apps / Packages / Updates / Operating Systems / Drivers, etc will go. It is not the content in the DP, but it's the content that supplies the DP

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 7 – Installing SQL for ConfigMgr
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 7 – Installing SQL for ConfigMgr

So far, we've got our Gateway, DC and started to setup our ConfigMgr Lab Server, in this installment, I'll be going over the SQL install for CM.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 8 – ConfigMgr Install
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 8 – ConfigMgr Install

We've been building up to this one, all the ground work has been laid. Let install ConfigMgr.

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 9 – ConfigMgr Settings Setup
Documentation

Building a ConfigMgr Lab from Scratch: Step 9 – ConfigMgr Settings Setup

This post will go over all the things we need to do now that we have a server