If you’ve been in IT for more than five minutes, you’ve heard that Active Directory is the backbone of a Windows environment. Every domain-joined machine, every login policy, every group permission — it all flows through AD. So when I started building out my homelab on a Dell PowerEdge R730, Active Directory was the obvious first stop.
This is video one of my homelab series. Everything else we build — PowerShell automation, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, file shares — depends on what we’re setting up here.
Why Active Directory First?
Because nothing else works without it.
I could have started with DNS or a file server, but every other service I’m planning for this lab ties back to AD one way or another. Want to apply policies to machines? AD. Want to manage user accounts at scale? AD. Want DNS integrated and automatic? You guessed it — AD.
If you’re working toward a sysadmin role or studying for certs like MD-102 or AZ-104, understanding how to stand up and configure AD from scratch is one of those foundational skills that never stops being useful, even as the industry moves more toward Entra ID and the cloud.
The Lab Setup
Everything in this series runs on a single Dell PowerEdge R730 I picked up for $400. It came with 64GB of RAM and 10TB of SAS storage — I added a 1TB NVMe for Proxmox boot and VM OS, and a 1TB M.2 SATA for extra VM storage.
The hypervisor is Proxmox VE. Active Directory lives in a Windows Server 2022 VM running on top of it.
Installing and Configuring AD DS
I’m not going to walk you through every click — the video covers that in detail. But here’s the high-level flow:
- Spin up a Windows Server 2022 VM in Proxmox with a static IP (
192.168.10.10) - Set the hostname to something sensible (
DC01) - Install the Active Directory Domain Services role via Server Manager
- Run the post-install wizard to promote the server to a domain controller
- Set the domain name to
trevtech.local, set the DSRM password, let it reboot
Here are the key PowerShell commands if you want to do it without the GUI:
# Active Directory and DNS role installation
Install-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services,DNS -IncludeManagementTools# Initial Forest and Domain setup
Install-ADDSForest -DomainName "trevtech.local" -ForestMode WinThreshold -DomainMode WinThreshold -DomainNetbiosName TREVTECH -InstallDNS -SafeModeAdministratorPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString "Sup3rS3cr3tP@ssw0rd" -AsPlainText -Force)After the reboot, you’ve got a working domain controller. From here you can start creating OUs, users, and groups.
The Gotchas
Here’s where I’d have saved myself some time if I’d known these upfront.
DNS has to be right before you promote. If the server can’t resolve its own hostname correctly before you run the AD DS promotion wizard, you’re going to have a bad time. I got this wrong on my first attempt. Set the static IP, point DNS at itself (127.0.0.1 or the server’s own IP), and verify with nslookup before you start.
DSRM password is not optional. The Directory Services Restore Mode password is what you use if AD breaks badly and you need to recover. Set it to something you’ll actually remember (or store it somewhere safe). I used a throwaway password on my first build and immediately forgot it.
Proxmox time sync matters. AD is sensitive to time skew — Kerberos authentication will fail if there’s more than a 5-minute difference between the DC and client clocks. Make sure the Proxmox host and the Windows Server VM are both syncing time correctly.
The FQDN matters. Don’t name your domain the same as a public domain (trevtech.com would be a bad choice). I went with trevtech.local specifically to avoid any split-DNS confusion. .local keeps things clean and internal.
Is It Worth Setting Up?
Yes. Without question.
If you’re studying for certs, building a homelab for job interviews, or just want to actually understand how enterprise environments work — spinning up Active Directory is the single highest-value thing you can do. Everything else in the IT stack connects to it.
The $400 R730 running Proxmox gives me the headroom to run multiple domain controllers, a bunch of client VMs, and still have room to add SCCM, Intune, and whatever else I decide to break next. You don’t need to spend more than that to get a real, enterprise-grade learning environment on your desk.
What’s Next
Episode 2 is PowerShell for Active Directory — we’re going to automate bulk user creation, OU management, and group membership with scripts you can actually use at work. A dedicated PowerShell companion video is planned for deeper automation coverage, so keep an eye out for that too.
Watch the full walkthrough on TrevTech-IT on YouTube and drop your questions in the comments. I read everything.
And if you broke something following along — welcome to the club.
— Trev | I broke it. Fixed it.
