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# System prepended metadata

title: 'Proxmox AD Lab: Some Notes on Windows Setup '

---

## Initial Windows System setup
For this, I'm going to be synthesising the steps from both DerronC's video guide and 0xBEN's writeups. I am doing this for a few reasons
- DerronC's guide is not for Proxmox, but 0xBEN's guide is.
- 0xBEN's initial guide for adding Window's VMs have best practices such as installing the VirtIO drivers for optimised performance.
    - https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/stable-virtio/virtio-win.iso
- 0xBEN's later guides for setting up the Active Directory forest go over how to use sysprep to create a VM template
    > "We want to run `sysprep` on to create a template VM, so that when we clone the VM, the Windows systems will always have a unique SID when joining to the domain." 
- 0xBEN's AD guide uses a script to introduce a host of vulnerabilties to the DC - I am NOT a fan of this - though as he himself admits, his goal was to get an AD Lab environment up and running efficiently (which he does most excellently)
![image](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/SJhgpN2xR.png)
- DerronC's guide has allows for more control over what vulnerabilities we are introducing into the environment.
- 0xBEN's guide uses Windows Server 2019, and I wished to experiment with 2022 instead
- 0xBEN's guide uses Proxmox 6.7 (if I remember correctly) while I am using Proxmox 8.1
    - The difference is largely minimal save for some defaults such as when picking a CPU Type for guests.

With all that said, where possible, I will credit which guide I am following at which stage.

### Proxmox Resource Pool Setup
This bit is an unnecessary step, but including such bits of, perhaps futile, organisation is me proverbially biting my proverbial thumb at my ADHD. 

I created a Resource Pool within Proxmox to put organise the machines I would be using for this lab.
![image](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/rkAjrr2lR.png)