I decided to rebuild one of my LABs for SCCM 1902 Technical Preview. During the build, someone posed a question on Twitter for examples of scripts/material to get a LAB up and running. @ncbrady has a great post that goes into great detail for building out SCCM servers at:-
My post doesn’t go into that amount of detail, it is just a simple checklist for me when building out my TP lab and I thought I’d share the love. I’ll refer to this post for my future “Nuke the LAB from Orbit” projects.
For the TP Infrastructure I keep things quite simple with two servers:-
-
Domain Controller: Hosting AD/DHCP/DNS/CertSrv
- ConfigMgr Server: Hosting SCCM/WSUS/SQL/SSRS.
- Did I say only 2 servers? I have a RRAS giving Internet connectivity for all my labs so I’ll give it a mention.
This post makes lots of assumptions e.g you know how to spin up a working Server 2019 VM in Hyper-V and have installed and configured the necessary roles to get your AD/DNS/DHCP services working.
It doesn’t cover detailed specs for hardware. I’m running my labs on a Dell XPS15. I quickly create a VM, attach the Server 2019 ISO, leave all the default Hyper-V settings and spin her up. I don’t scale out my labs (because I’m poor) and don’t really expect to hit any performance issues with my 2-3 test clients.
For my TP lab I do not follow best practice on disk layout or sizing for SQL or SCCM (slaps back of own hand). Everything goes on the C drive – do not do this in production..never..hear me! For the official sizing guides, visit:-
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/plan-design/configs/recommended-hardware
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/plan-design/hierarchy/plan-for-the-site-database
So this really is a “What do I need to do to BEFORE I install a shiny Primary Site Server in my lab” post.
On Lab Domain Controller
1 . Make sure the domain account you use during setup is a Domain Admin and a Schema Admin
2 . Using ADSI Edit, Create “System Management” Container on DC
- Expand Domain
- Right-click CN=System
- Click New – Object
- Select Container, and then click Next.
- In the value box, type “System Management”
- Assign SiteServer$ Computer Account Full Permissions for this object and all descendant objects
3 . Extend AD Schema
SMSSETUP\BIN\X64\extadsh.exe
4 . Create SQL Services Accounts
domain\SQLAgent
domain\SQLService
domain\SQLReport
On Lab Primary
1 . Download and Install SQL Server 2017 (with cumulative update 2 or later) from VLSC/Visual Studio or Trial (below)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/sql-server/sql-server-downloads#
!IMPORTANT! Set Default Collation to “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS” during SQL configuration.
2 . Configure SQL Server Memory Usage Maximum Limit
3 . Configure SQL Server Min Memory to 8GB (or less if poor like me)
4 . Configure SQL Server Security Authentication to Windows Mode Only
5 . Download and Install SSRS 2017
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55252
6 . Configure SSRS Service account as domain\SQLReport
7 . Download and Install SSMS 17 SQL Mgmt Studio
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2043154
8 . Download and Install Windows 10 1809 ADK
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2026036
Select the following features:-
- Deployment Tools
- User State Migration Tool (USMT)
9 . Download and Install Windows 10 1809 WinPE Add-On
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2022233
10 . Download ConfigMgr CB TP Baseline Media
https://www.microsoft.com/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-configuration-manager-and-endpoint-protection-technical-preview
11 . Install Windows Features:-
Windows Server Update Services (accept additional features)
- Un-Select WID Connectivity
- Select SQL Server Connectivity
- Select WSUS Services
- Set WSUS Content Path e.g. C:\WSUS
- Specify WSUS DB Instance to “LOCALHOST”
IIS configuration (Select the following):-
Common HTTP Features:
Default Document
Static Content
Security:
Windows Authentication
Application Development:
ASP.NET 3.5 (accept additional features)
.NET Extensibility 3.5
ASP.NET 4.7 (accept additional features)
.NET Extensibility 4.5
ISAPI Extensions
IIS 6 Management Compatibility:
IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility
IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
.NET Framework 3.5 Features
.NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)
.NET Framework 4.7 Features
.NET Framework 4.7 (installed by default in OS)
HTTP Activation (and automatically selected options)
BITS Server Extensions (accept additional features)
Remote Differential Compression
12 . Complete WSUS Post Installation Tasks from Server Manager
13 . Run the ConfigMgr Pre Requisite Check tool:-
MEDIA\SMSSETUP\BIN\X64\prereqchk.exe /local
Install ConfigMgr
Check/Re-mediate TLS1.2 support for SQL Native Client 2012
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56041
ENU\x64\sqlncli.msi (4.8MB) – Smaller than downloading the Full SQL Service Pack 4 (1GB)
Install ConfigMgr