Create a Windows AD Box in Proxmox

Introduction

The goal of this lab is to create a Windows Server 2019 VM on Proxmox. We will then use this Box as an AD.

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Windows VM Creation

In this section of the lab we will be creating and setting the specifications of our Windows VM in Proxmox.

Step 1: General Section setup

1. Click on the "Create New Virtual Machine" button.
2. Set VM name: "Sullivan-WindowsAD".
3. Set VM-ID.

Step 2: OS Section Setup

1. Select "Use CD/DVD disk image file (iso)" since we will be using the ISOs uploaded to Proxmox.
2. Under the Use CD/DVD button choose local for storage and the "Server Eval" ISO for the ISO image.
3. On the Right hand side under "Guest OS" put the type of OS and the date. In this case we are using "Microsoft Windows" and the date is "10/2016/2019"
4. Select the radio box underneath Guest OS, which says "Add additional drive for VirtIO drivers." Since Promox is a QEMU/KVM based hypervisor, it doesn't support Windows, so additional Windows drivers are needed for it to work. Set the storage to "local" and selec the Virtio-Win ISO for the ISO image.

Step 3: System Section Setup

1. Leave everything as default but make sure the SCSI controller is "VirtIO SCSI single".

Step 4: Disks Section Setup

1. Set storage to SYN-CR-MAIN
2. Disk Size: 50 GiB
3. Ensure Bus Device is SCSI and set count to 1

Step 5: CPU Section Setup

1. We want to make sure we have an appropriate amount of sockets and cores. We are going to change the number of sockets to 2.
2. Everything else can stay as defaults.

Step 6: Memory Section Setup

1. Under this section we are allocating the memory for the CPUs and RAM. This is going to be a Windows AD Box so it should have 4-8 GB of memory.
2. I'm setting it to 4672 MiB.

Step 7: Network Section Setup

1. Set bridge to vmbr4 because that is the intern space.
2. Set Model to Intel E1000.

Step 8: Confirm Settings

Step 9: Normal Windows Installation

1. Select Country, Time, etc.
2. Click "Install Now" to begin Installation.
3. I selected Windows Server 2019 Standard Evaluation (Desktop Experience) as my operating system.
4. Select Custom as the install type.

Step 10: Load Drivers

1. On the page titled "Where do you want to install Windows" select "Load driver"
2. Click Browse in the dialog box
3. Drop down the CD Drive (D:).

4. Drop down vioscsi and drop down 2k19

5. Select amd64 and click next

6. Allocate Space and click next

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VirtIO Driver Setup

We have now finished the general installation process and the VM is powered up, Windows is installed, and an Administrator password is set. Now we have to install the VirtIO driver directly onto the VM.

Step 1: Open VirtIO Drive

1. Go to File Explorer within the VM
2. Select the "virtio-win" drive

3. Find the Windows Installer Executable:

4. Go through the setup process and specify "vioscsi" wherever it asks.
5. Begin and Finish Installation

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Configuring IP and testing connectivity

Our VM is started and virtIO is installed. Now we want to configure our network settings so we can have connectivity.

Step 1: Editing IPv4 Properties

1. Navigate to the Network and Sharing Center
2. Under connections click "ethernet"
3. Click "Properties"
4. Double click on "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)"
5. Input your IP and your default gateway

Step 2: Check if we can ping the gateway'

1. Search bar -> cmd -> enter
2. ping -n 1

Step 3: See if we have connectivity outside of the network

1. For this part I set the default DNS to 8.8.8.8 (google). If in the future we will use the AD box as a DNS server, or another server as a DNS server the IP would be changed to that of the server.
2. ping -n 1 google.com

This means that we have connectivity inside and outside of our network.

Step 4: Change computer name

For ease of use if we set up DNS later, I'm going to change my computer hostname from the default to Sullivan-WindowsAD

1. In settings type in "Computer name"
2. Click on the "View PC name" option
3. Scroll down and click the "Rename this PC" option
4. Type in new computer name and restart computer.

Conclusion

In this lab I learned how to create a Windows VM in Proxmox. It was fairly straightforward given that most of the bridges and ISOs were already uploaded or created. This lab is important not only to my work as an intern but for the rest of my education given that after two years of working with VMWare, the school is making the switch to Proxmox. This lab will come in handy for future labs.