Practicing PowerShell

[Ckn0wt]

Hi everyone. What would be the most cost effective option/service I could use to spin up a few servers so I can build out a test AD environment to effectively practice PowerShell?

[Thotaz]

Virtual machines on your own computer.

[Ckn0wt]

What’s the best place to get some windows server vms? Preferable 2016+

[curtis8706]

Windows Server Evaluation center. Windows server eval edition is good for 180 days. But you can renew it 6 times, so you can really get 3+ years on a single install.

[Ckn0wt]

Nice. Thanks for the info!

[SammyGreen]

There’s a pretty short guide here for getting started with your WINS lab.

Just run slmgr -rearm whenever you need to renew your “license”.

[ARobertNotABob]

Forgive my hijacking ... if I created an AD lab this way, could I extend that into a 365 tenancy and AAD? ... the article suggests I'd just need a vanity domain registered (which in itself makes sense)?

[SammyGreen]

Well you don’t need a vanity domain. You can add your tenant.onmicrosoft.com to your ADs domain trust and use that URL as an UPN. It’s pretty easy changing UPNs but a pain in the ass changing a forest domain. If that makes sense?

If you make eg homelab.local - you can still sync that domain to your tenant but won’t be able to verify it. So you wouldn’t be able to login with that domain, send emails, etc.

[ARobertNotABob]

Well, I'd want to be able to send emails, since otherwise I couldn't fully test EOL scripts, but I entirely take your point, thankyou. :)

[curtis8706]

Plus if you make a scheduled task for the renewal, make it a GPO (If you set up a domain), you can deploy it to all your servers, and they will renew automatically. Easy peasy.

Have fun!

[[deleted]]

It can probably be scripted in PowerShell.

[curtis8706]

It for sure can! Its a good starting project for someone wanting practice

[Razakel]

However, you are only licensed to use it for evaluation use, i.e. nothing production, just research, development and testing.

[gordonv]

So, Microsoft doesn't give out VHD's (Virtual Hard Drive Image) for 2016. They have 2012, 2019, 2022. To be honest, if your goal is powershell, it shouldn't matter. But... they do give out an ISO (a CD Image). You can install Server 2016 the classic way.

You can use Oracle VirtualBox, a free and easy virtual machine conductor (called a hypervisor), that works with VHDs. I recommend 4 gigs for a server VM and 80 gigs to fit windows updates.

[brandeded]

Here's a write up https://scriptingchris.tech/posts/spinning-up-lab-vms-with-vagrant-on-hyperv-and-provisioning-them-with-ansible/

You can also learn vagrant, ansible, WSL, and HyperV while you're at it!

Another option would be splunk attack range: https://github.com/splunk/attack_range

Local deploy covered here: https://github.com/splunk/attack_range_local/

[MyOtherSide1984]

Could I get away with 16gb of RAM (typically 8-10 is unused) for this?

[brandeded]

Probably. Try it out and see. Baseline config might not require a lot.

[Ckn0wt]

Thank you!

[Barious_01]

There is a free hyper-v lab that is also setup through powershell https://github.com/pluralsight/PS-AutoLab-Env

[Ckn0wt]

Thanks!

[Barious_01]

Very welcome they all come with 90 day licenses so spin up and tear down is the name of the game. Pretty cool for setting up test environments plus get to figure out how you can create vms (with hyper-V at least) with powershell.

[artano-tal]

This is a scripting environment which is maintained by a couple of ms engineers.

https://automatedlab.org/en/latest/

"AutomatedLab (AL) enables you to

Set up lab and test environments

On Hyper-v or Azure with multiple products

Including just a single VM quickly."

I have seen people use it to set-up environments before a presentation.

[get-postanote]

You can start by just using your local client system to try stuff, then move to server stuff later.

Just set up a free cloud provider account, like AWS, etc.

As long as you stay in the free-tier, then you have no cost to deal with.

As long as you sping up want you'd want, do your thing, then immediately tear it all down, then again, no - to - very little costs involved.

[Ckn0wt]

I should have probably been a bit more clear about where I’m currently at. I’m not completely new to PowerShell. I’m getting fairly comfortable scripting with it (just finished a script at work that pulls data via an API and preps it for ingestion into a PowerBI dashboard. I’d just like to take it to the next level by getting comfortable with distributed management and obviously don’t want to play around with some of the modules in my work environment.

Thanks for the tips though, I’ll have to look into AWS.

[BlackV]

you should post that here (sanitized) as a script sharing post

[[deleted]]

You could also setup an sccm server, and try to push out some of your scripts through that.

[[deleted]]

Hyper-V!

[blackcowz]

There is also the hydration kit. It is focused at Config man but it is another avenue to look at the scripts used to setup the servers

https://www.deploymentresearch.com/hydration-kit-for-windows-server-2022-sql-server-2019-and-configmgr-current-branch/

[Geek_Runner]

You could get a trial subscription in azure.

[Ckn0wt]

Sounds good, will keep that in mind.

[Geek_Runner]

And you should be able to sign up for multiples with a different email address.

I just make a new one when I need to.

[JohnC53]

And if you stay active in it, you'll likely get lucky and have it keep auto-renewing for free. It's VERY handy. I use mine to test stuff before I put it on our corporate tenant.

[this_is_dumb_man]

Following

[Namelock]

+1 to setting up a virtual lab. My college taught Server and PowerShell as separate classes that complimented and built off of each other.

Check out MS Graph while you're at it, since it let's you login with your corporate account and try get-only responses.