Creating a SQL Server 2012 playground (part II)

Introduction

This is the second blogpost in a serie of blogposts (part I) about building a SQL Server 2012 playground. Well, it was a bit challenging building the VM's with a domaincontroller using virtualbox and sysprep and setting up the networkadapters and IP addresses. In this blogpost I'll describe the setup of a domaincontroller with two Virtual box environments.

For some software (e.g. Sharepoint) a domain account is needed. For instance, the powerpivot integration with sharepoint needs a domainaccount. Therefore we need to setup a domain controller. One advantage is that the services can run under a different AD user also.

According to wikipedia a domain controller (DC) is "a server that responds to security authentication requests (logging in, checking permissions, etc.) within the Windows Server domain. A domain is a concept introduced in Windows NT whereby a user may be granted access to a number of computer resources with the use of a single username and password combination."

Apologizes for some dutch screenshots.



This blogpost is one in a series of blogposts:

• Creating a VM environment with virtualbox (part I).

• Configuration of the domain controller (part II).

• Creating AD users and installing SQL Server 2012 (part III).

• Installation of Sharepoint (part IV).

• Adding the tabular mode instance to the SQL Server installation (part V).

• Adding the powerpivot mode instance to the SQL Server installation (part VI).

• Configuring SharePoint Central Administration (part VII).

• Installing Reporting Services Sharepoint mode as Single Server Farm (part VIII).

• Installing MS SQL Server Powerpivot for Excel 2010 (part IX).
• Installation of SSDT and the SSDT Power tools (part X).
• Installation of Contoso and AdventureWorks databases (part XI).
• Installation of Master Data Services (part XII).
• Installation of Data Quality Services (part XIII).
• etc.

Cloning the VM

In order to setup a domain controller, the first step is to create a clone of the VM that is created in part I. Right click on the VM in VirtualBox and click on clone. If all is well a perfect clone is created.

The next step is to provide the enironment with a proper name. I choose to name it : "DomainController". The next option is to reinitialize the network card with a new MAC Address.

The next window is about choosing a linked clone and a full clone.  I choose for the option "linked clone". In a article of Jonathan Kehayias more explanation is given about these options.

Remove networkadapter 3 and 4 and run the VM because the Domain controller will not have setup a iSCSI (and perhaps the SQL Server 2012 playground too ;-)

Now there are some possible directions you can take. You can partially set up a IP configuation for the networkadapters now or you can do this later. I've chosen to configure this in a later stadium.

Setup the domaincontroller

To begin the configuration of the Active Directory Domain Services you need to add a role to the server. In the Servermanager window you can select a role and add them to the configuration. After this is installed, run dcpromo to begin the configuration of the AD domain to the server.

Windows begins checking if the domain controller is installed on the Vistual Machine.

After the verification the installation process takes place.

The following window appears:

Press next and proceed to the next window.

Choose to create a new domain in a new forrest and press next.

Choose a Fully Qualified Domain Name for the new domain and then click on the Next button.  I have called it "YellowMonkey.dc".

Press Next and choose the right Forrest functional level. I choose Window Server 2008 R2.

Choose  a DNS server configuation for the server.

A warning appears on the screen and choose "Yes" and proceed to the next window.

Proceed with a click on the "Yes" button.

Proceed with a click on the "Next" button.

Enter a password twice and press on "Next".

A summary window is presented which summarizes al the information of the previous windows.

Below a couple of screenshots during the installation.

Here another window.

Yet another screendump.

And again a sceenshot.

And finally, finished.

A reboot of the server is required.

Setting up the configuration (IP, Computer)

I've noticed that setting up the networkadapters and theIP addresses are very important for setting up the VM environments with a domain conroller. An article that helped me understandig setting up the IP addresses is available on Technet.

Below i've configured the Computername.

Yet another screenshot of how I configured the different networkadapters in the VM environment. If you have more than 1 networkadapter, I advice to add one at a time and rename the standardname that Windows provides, add another networkadapter and rename it again.

Below a screenshot on how I've configured the networkadapter on the Domaincontroller environment:

This is the configuration on the SQL Serverplayground VM:

Here the configuration of the IP address of the DC networkadapter. Here you can see that preferred DNS Server points to the IP address of the networkadapter on the other VM machine.

And below you can see that we've reached the end goal. Now, we can add users from the Domain controller on the SQL Server 2012 playground.

Conclusion

It's the fist time i've done this and i've have to admit that i've installed the VM a couple of times because i've mixed up the steps or didn't use sysprep in the right way. Beware! One lesson i've learned is that if the sysprep is not done right a double SID is in the network and that gives a lot of troubles.

Another lesson is that the netwerkadapters needs careful configuration. Don't mix up the netwerkadapters because that gives a lot of troubles too. I've added them one by one and renamed them to NAT (for instance), reboot, add the other adapter (for instance DC), reboot, etc.

It's great to see it working.

Greetz,

Hennie