Devolutions Labs

Prerequisites

This Hyper-V lab is designed to work properly on a Windows host with 32GB of RAM, alongside common development tools, and with minimal disk usage.

If you have never set up PowerShell, use the following to change the default execution policy and update it from an elevated shell:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force
Install-PackageProvider Nuget -Force
Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Force

If you do not have a package manager already (winget, choco), use the following code snippet to install one:

if (-Not (Get-Command -Name winget -CommandType Application -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {
	iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
}

You can now install Hyper-V including the management tools (very important!). Manually reboot once this is done:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All -NoRestart

In order to use Hyper-V from an unelevated shell, add yourself to the local Hyper-V Administrators group:

$CurrentUser = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent().Name
if (-Not (Get-LocalGroupMember -Group "Hyper-V Administrators" -Member $CurrentUser -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {
	Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Hyper-V Administrators" -Member @($CurrentUser)
}

While optional, it is highly recommended to use Windows Terminal instead of the old Windows console host. Install it quickly using chocolatey:

choco install -y --no-progress microsoft-windows-terminal

Last but not least, install PowerShell 7 using an elevated Windows PowerShell terminal:

&([ScriptBlock]::Create((irm "https://aka.ms/install-powershell.ps1"))) -UseMSI -Quiet

At this point, it is advised to reboot.

From this point forward, always use PowerShell 7, as Windows PowerShell compatibility is not guaranteed.

Host Initialization

Open an elevated PowerShell prompt, and move to the "powershell" directory of this repository containing all the scripts.

Make sure the script files are unblocked for execution if they've been downloaded from a browser (Mark-of-the-Web):

Get-ChildItem . -Recurse | Unblock-File

Run the host_init.ps1 script to initialize the host environment:

.\host_init.ps1

You may need to reboot the host for the Hyper-V feature installation to complete.

Golden Image

Download the latest Windows Server .iso file (windows_server_2022.iso). This is the regular Windows Server ISO which is only available to those with the right Visual Studio (MSDN) subscription, not the evaluation ISO available publicly. Ask someone on your team for a download link (hint: the person maintaining these scripts). Copy the iso file to "C:\Hyper-V\ISOs", then create the golden virtual machine image:

.\golden.ps1

The process takes about an hour to complete, and creates a clean virtual hard disk image containing everything we need for all the virtual machines in the lab.

Virtual Machines

Launch the script to build the isolated lab of virtual machines:

.\build.ps1

All virtual machines are created in order using the golden image. The entire process takes about an hour to complete.

Host Synchronization

Last but not least, run the host synchronization script to make it possible to reach the virtual machines with the proper hostnames. The script also imports the root certificate authority from the lab, such that HTTPS will work properly inside the browser of the host.

.\host_sync.ps1

Remote Desktop Manager

Launch Remote Desktop Manager, then run the rdm_init.ps1 script to create and initialize a new data source called "IT-HELP-LAB"

.\rdm_init.ps1

You will need to restart Remote Desktop Manager after running the script to see the new data source in the list. This part usually doesn't work well, so if "IT-HELP-LAB" is missing from the list, simply create an SQLite data source of the same name using "%LocalAppData%\Devolutions\RemoteDesktopManager\IT-HELP-LAB.db" as database file.