In the first part of this LAB setup guide, I described the hardware selection process.
In the second part, I described the hypervisor selection and installation.
In the third part, I described VM guest considerations and preparations.

In this post I cover quickly configuring a Server 2012 VM as DC with DNS and DHCP by using PowerShell.

The steps I do take less than 10 minutes in my test lab now. Here’s a short description:

1. Create a VM that uses your previously made parent disk.
2. Configure the server name and IP addressing and reboot the computer.
3. Install AD DS (domain controller) including DNS forward lookup zone and reboot the computer.
4. Configure AD and DNS : Enable AD Recycle Bin, Add DNS forwarder, add DNS reverse lookup zone, create DNS PTR record for DC.
5. Install + configure DHCP : Install DHCP, Add scope, configure scope, authorize DHCP server in AD.

The scripts I’ve created for steps 2 to 5 can be found here and are based on the great work Stefan Stranger already did in his blog post Installing a new OpsMgr 2012 (SP1) environment the fast way. I added some stuff of my own so it would meet my needs and I tried to keep it as generic as possible so other people can re-use my code as well.

PS: In step 2, IP addressing is not in place yet. To get scripts tot the system, consider:

• Putting the scripts in an ISO file that you can mount.
• Opening Hyper-V Virtual Machine Connection to VM and using “Clipboard”, “Type Clipboard Text”.