Revision as of 21:17, 21 August 2014

Setting up Windows Server for the lab environment

If you are going to be supporting a business computing environment you need a computer lab. Mainly because the business environment is fast paced and experimenting on the company’s production machines is very unwise.

The objective of this document is to help you create a functioning Exchange server set for a lab. There are many steps and prerequisites and this should have all of them so you can get a basic system up and running. Hopefully you will learn enough to make creating the production version of these systems go much easier and successfully.

Creating a Computer Lab

For this exercise you will need at least two computers: an Exchange Server and a Retain Server.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to create a computer lab, and they don’t even need to be real.

I highly recommend Virtual Machines (VMs). The main reason is because you can take snapshots some once you have a working system, you can safely experiment. VMs are very useful in a production environment as well as they make backup and recovery much easier. But that is a different subject.

You can even use a couple of old laptops and an old switch.

Installing Windows Server 2012 R2

As long as your hardware is up to the job the basic install of Windows Server 2012 R2 is straightforward, you put in the disc/iso and let it rip. It's what comes afterwards that is the issue.

Once the server is up and running it will bring you to Server Manager.

Setting up Local Server

Clicking on Local Server is the machine you are on.

From here you can do a few things that are pretty important:

• Set the Computer name (once you start installing software it often does not like changing the computer name. Especially Exchange.)
• Turn off the firewall
• Setting the IP address
• Turning off IE Enhanced Security Configurations
• Setting the Timezone (very important)
• Install latest updates

Changing Password Policy

One of the first things to do is change the password policy so it isn't so onerous.

Search for Edit Group Policy or go to Local Computer Policy/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Account Policies/Password Policy

• Maximum Password age = 0
• Minimum password age = 0
• Minimum password length = 0
• Password must meet complexity requirement = disabled

This is a good place to take a snapshot and a template to use for the Retain Server.

Making a Server Serve

Right now there is nothing that really makes this machine a server. So we are going to have to install some roles and features. The server software has installed most things you need, it just isn't active yet.

Since we are focused on creating an email server we need to install some infrastructure to pull that off. The basis for any Microsoft network is Active Directory and to install AD we need a DNS server that it can have access to.

GWAVA has DNS and DHCP for the company so you don't need a DHCP in this case but it is necessary to the network in general. But AD interacts with DNS and you will want a local one for that for it to play with. Just only have the machines you have connect to it use that DNS and set the IPs manually so you do not have to worry about DHCP.

Installing DNS

In Server Manager, click on "Add roles and features" in the Dashboard.

• Click Next because you know you are starting a wizard.
• Select Role-based or feature-based installation.
• Select your server.
• Select the Role of DNS Server. A dialog box will popup and tell you it will add required tools.
• Click Next because it is what you want to do.
• Install.

Soon you will see a new role on the left side-bar and if you click on the Tools drop-down you will see tools related to DNS.

ProTip: in a lab things will change rather often so you will occasionally want to go into the DNS manager and Clear Cache and Scavenge stale resource records to clean things up.