Bootstrapping is a term I’ve first heard of when learning to build websites. There was a method called Twitter Bootstrap which is a toolkit to develop webapps to work out of the box and be compatible with all browsers. Its also is a popular business term and an actual physical strap on boots. 🙂

Login to your ESXi host. You can either right click on Virtual Machines on the left column or simply click on the Create/Register VM button.

The VM creation window will pop up. Click Next on this first screen. Then enter a name for your VM and choose the OS family and version. Once complete click on Next.

Select the storage where you’d like to store the VM. We’ll use the shared storage we created a while back. Once done click on Next where you’ll customize the hardware. Give whatever resources you feel are necessary to run the DC depending on how much resources you have to spare. When done, navigate down to the CD/DVD Drive 1 section. Click on the drop down and choose Datastore ISO file.

Another window will pop up to select the ISO from a datastore you should have uploaded beforehand. Find the ISO and click on Select the Next and finally Finish.

The VM creation should happen almost instantly. Next we’ll install and configure the Domain Controller.

Now that we have our VM ready, on your ESXi host, click on the Virtual Machines section on the left column. Right click on the newly created VM. Navigate to Console > Launch Remote Console.

*Install the Remote Console if you haven’t done so already.

Click on the Play/Power On button and the machine should boot to the ISO we mounted from the datastore by default.

Once loaded simply continue through with the Windows install process. I like to use the Windows GUI as opposed to the core installation. So for those installing Windows Server 2016 Standard. Make sure you choose the Desktop Experience option when selecting the operating system.

When the install is complete, let’s make sure we…

• Set a static IP
• Turn Off Power Management on the NIC
• Activate windows
• Install the latest VMware tools
• Un-mount the ISO from the machine

…before promoting this machine to a Domain Controller and installing the DNS role.

K done? Cool! So now let’s add a few roles.

Open up the Server Manager if it isn’t already. Navigate to Manage Add Roles and Features. Click Next a few times till you get to the Select server roles page.

Then select the following roles:

1. Active Directory Domain Services
2. DNS Server

Installing them with the default settings is fine for now.

When done, click on close. You’ll notice a little bang in the Notification flag at the top. Once you click on that you’ll have the option to Promote this server to a domain controller. Do that!

Unless you are already running a domain controller, click on the third option which is to Add a new forest. Enter your domain name here then click Next.  Then on the next screen the DNS and Global Catalog options should be checked.  Enter the DSRM password and click on Next.

You can ignore the yellow notification on the next page. It’s a benign warning. Just click Next. Keep the defaults and click Next on the following pages as well till you get to the last page where you’ll click on Install.

DNS Configuration

The server will then reboot automatically when complete. When it comes back up, login and the Server Manager should open automatically. Once opened, click on Tools > DNS

Let’s first create a Reverse Lookup Zone since one doesn’t exist at the moment. Navigate down to Reverse Lookup Zones and right click on the folder and select New Zone…

Click Next on this first page. On the next page you’ll want to create a Primary Zone and click on Next. Keep the default setting on the next page and click on Next yet again. Choose IPv4 Reverse Lookup Zone on this page and click Next.

On this page, you’ll want to enter the first 3 octets of the network that our vCenter will live in. Click on Next when you are done. Click Next again for the billionth time then finally click on Finish.

Sweet that’s done! Now navigate to the domain we’ve just created under Forward Lookup Zones. Right click on the domain and select New Host (A or AAAA)…

We’ll want to enter the information for the vCenter we are planning to deploy. When finished click on Add Host, Ok and Done.

Great. So as long as you are on a machine or jumpbox that has its DNS pointing to our new DNS server, the hostname and IP should now resolve both ways.

Works like a charm!

Mother of God…that’s the WORST EVER!

Lulz! Anyway, Thin Provisioning doesn’t pre-allocate all the disk space provisioned. It only allocates the space when data is being written.

So for example if you installed an OS on a 100GB hard drive and the OS was only taking up 20GB. The back-end physical storage will only consume 20GB instead of the full 100GB. However, the OS will see that it has 80GB of available space. Make sense?