Creating a MS Active Directory test environment

[CyberNerd]

How do you do it?

I want to replicate my Active Directory environment - complete with all of the data and use it in an isolated test environment.

What's the best way to do this?Is there a standard MS tool for this?

 

I was tempted to create a new member server, DCPromo it and then take it offline - but I'm sure that cleaning up the mess afterwards would be non-trivial, besides I'd like to keep the name of the DC. Could I just use VMWare to replicate the machine, export it and run on a separate box?

Any gotchas (other than it accidentally going back on the original domain)?

[synaesthesia]

P2V would probably be the quickest way of doing it. Either just keep it off network or dont add networking ability to the VM until you've altered the settings.

[MatthewL]

I have just got a VM built up on my PC called a new domain and a couple of clients connected to it and it does the job for testing things.

[CyberNerd]

I have just got a VM built up on my PC called a new domain and a couple of clients connected to it and it does the job for testing things.

 

I really need the live test data with thousands of users/computers.

[CyberNerd]

P2V would probably be the quickest way of doing it. Either just keep it off network or dont add networking ability to the VM until you've altered the settings.

 

Can I run P2V on a virtual machine then?

[synaesthesia]

Ah, sorry didn't see t was already a VM. Just copy it over to another box/hypervisor then, stick with VMWare and you shouldn't have to do any conversion - if you do though, VMWare converter will do it all for you.

[CyberNerd]

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

[CyberNerd]

That worked pretty well.

For reference I did:

qemu-img convert /pathtovmdkfile.vmdk convertedbinfile.bin

 

then

VBoxManage convertdd convertedbinfile.bin convertedvdifile.vdi

 

Then I started virtualbox. Stripped the SATA controller and added an IDE controller.

booted to safemode, installed the virtualbox drivers and it all worked.

[Chris_]

What do you use for backups? I've used Veeam to restore my DC in to a sandboxed environment. Gives me a good chance to test the backups

[pcstru]

@CyberNerd. It's worth considering changing the domain name and/or making sure you have some other means of making sure you are running scripts against the test rather than the live domain. It can be too easy if you happen to be working with both, to lose track and start running test scripts against the production server.

[CyberNerd]

It's ok. I'm only running it on a laptop at home for testing out some ldap user creation scripts.

[pcstru]

It always *starts* like that!