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 the fourth part, I described Configuring Server 2012 VM as DC with DNS and DHCP using PowerShell

In this post I want to share with you this great blog post “How to use PowerShell to populate Active Directory with plenty enough users for SharePoint” by Wictor Wilén – SharePoint MCA, MCM and MVP.

What you basically do is:

1. Use http://www.fakenamegenerator.com to create x number of users from countries you specify and containing fields/data that you specify. This will be sent by mail for free as a .csv
2. Use PowerShell to import the CSV and create the user accounts in AD.

What I like about the method is that besides creating many users, it also uses user data that you could encounter in real-life. Also you can modify the user data to more closely match your desired environment. By example by specifying that you want to have Dutch and US names only. For testing purposes, it can be good to include names with strange characters as well, because when these work well …. chances are that everything works well.

[UPDATE 25-01-2014]

Since there were some issues with the original source, I decided to store a cached version as PDF as well (just in case) : How to use PowerShell to populate Active Directory with plenty enough users for SharePoint
It is best to visit the original site though, if it’s available.

[UPDATE 25-01-2014]

[UPDATE 24-03-2016]

An alternative method is displayed here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Create-Real-Fake-Names-e1635ef4

[UPDATE 24-03-2016]