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:
- 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
- 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]
Tags: account, Active Directory, Active Directory Domain Services, AD DS, automate, DC, Domain Controller, fake name generator, ICT, lab, name generator, Powershell, Script, user, user data
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:
- Create a VM that uses your previously made parent disk.
- Configure the server name and IP addressing and reboot the computer.
- Install AD DS (domain controller) including DNS forward lookup zone and reboot the computer.
- Configure AD and DNS : Enable AD Recycle Bin, Add DNS forwarder, add DNS reverse lookup zone, create DNS PTR record for DC.
- 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”.
Tags: Active Directory, Active Directory Domain Services, AD DS, automate, configuration, DC, DHCP, DNS, Domain Controller, Domain Naming System, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, forward lookup zone, forwarder, Hyper-V, hypervisor, ICT, installation, lab, Powershell, reverse lookup zone, Script, Virtual Machine, virtualization, VM
General
Last Friday I attended the first Dutch Powershell User Group meeting in Eindhoven at Master IT Training and it was great. There were a lot of knowledgeable and passionate people and the interactive sessions were great as well. Thanks go out to all attendees, but especially to the ones presenting and organizing the event.
The fact that we were asked to leave the building (because it was getting pretty late and they wanted to lock up), also stresses the passion of all attendees because. If this wasn’t the case we probably would’ve stayed a lot longer.
Be sure to check out the Dutch PowerShell User Group (DuPSUG) website and Twitter on a regular basis for articles and future events. Ed Wilson also wrote a post of the meeting on the “Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog”.
Photos
Original photo on flickr
Sessions
Below are the sessions with some info about the speakers and their sessions. I also added notes I took and other information I looked up afterwards. If you come across any errors or have comments, please leave a reply so I can fix it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Active Directory, AD, AD DS, ADDS, ADSISEARCHER, Apache Subversion, CIM, CodePlex, Common Information Model, dcom, distributed com, DuPSUG, Dutch PowerShell User Group, Ed Wilson, Eindhoven, Event, git, Integrated Scripting Environment, ISE, Jaap Brasser, Jeff Wouters, LDAP, Master IT, Mercurial, Powershell, Powershell 3.0, PowerShell Remoting, Powershell v3, Richard Siddaway, rpc, snippets, splatting, SVN, team foundation server, Team Foundation Server 2012, Team Foundation Service, TFS, The Scripting Guy, The Scripting Wife, Version control, Windows, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 Server, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, WinRM, WMI, workflow, ws-man
blog.bjornhouben.com 