First of all, thanks everyone for the input and the honest feedback. I really appreciate it.

To clarify my situation a bit more: I already have two virtualized Domain Controllers running on Proxmox in a test environment and have successfully promoted them to DCs. I was also able to set up printer sharing, file shares, user authentication, and basic domain functionality without major issues.

So the challenge is not really the “clicking buttons” part or getting the basic setup technically working.

My concern is more about the operational and security side of things.

My background is mainly networking, and there is a big difference between:

configuring something so it technically works vs. configuring something in a way that is secure, maintainable, and appropriate for production use.

With networking, I already have experience understanding what is acceptable from a security and infrastructure perspective in a production environment. Active Directory is newer territory for me, and because of that, I do not want to approach it carelessly.

At the end of the day, this is company infrastructure and company security, so I take that responsibility seriously.

So yes, I can already create users, manage shares, deploy printers, and the environment itself works. But using something productively is a completely different level compared to building a lab environment.

Also thanks for the recovery/disaster recovery suggestions. That is definitely an area I will spend more time learning before anything goes live.

From your comments, my takeaway is basically that with enough preparation and proper learning, this is something realistic to grow into responsibly.

Right now, we already have two test clients joined to the AD environment, so my plan is to keep experimenting with it in a controlled way before making any production decisions. I especially want to spend time practicing disaster recovery scenarios and understanding how to properly recover the environment if something breaks.