Installing Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller in the VMBox - Part 1

Installing Windows 2008 R2 server domain controller in the VMBox - Part 1

Why do we want to setup a domain controller on a VM ?

As a developer,  sometime I need to test the cross domain access, thus it's useful to have a  domain controller on the VM.

1. Download the VMBox from the oracle's web site https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

2. Download the Windows Server 2008 Server R2 64 bits iso file from the Microsoftt website for 180 days-trial.  the file name is 7601.17514.101119-1850_x64fre_server_eval_en-us-GRMSXEVAL_EN_DVD.iso and it's about 3GB.
 note : If your server trial-time is expired. You could extend the trial time by entered the following command at the dos command prompt.  "slmgr -rearm"


3. Run the VMBox

4.  Create the machine : Click on the Machine->New (or Ctrl-N), a popup Create New Virtual Machine appears, click Next.


5. Select the OS and the Version.

6. The next step is to select the memory for your VM.  I selected 4G of memory because I have 12G on my machine.

7. Select the hard disk size

• Select the harddisk file type, use the default selection (VDI).
• Select  Dynamically allocated virtual disk type. 
• Select the  80G hardisk size.

 8. Setting the number of CPU.  By default, only 1 CPU is selected.  We want change to 4 CPUs.
Setting->System->Processor

9. Setting the Display to 128M Video Memory and Enable 2D Video Acceleration.

10. Setting the Network.  Select the Bridged Adapter so your could have access to the internet.

11. Setting the Shared Folder.  Click in the + folder on the right,  Select the folder that your want to share between your PC and the VM. 

Do not forget to select the Auto-mount.

12.  Setting the CD/DVD.  We want to map the Windows Server R2 iso file to the DVD drive.  Select the IDE Controller - Empty DVD, Then click on the DVD Icon on right in the Attributes section. Subsequently, chose the file 7601.17514.101119-1850_x64fre_server_eval_en-us-GRMSXEVAL_EN_DVD.iso

Now you are ready to boot-up your VM and start installing the Windows Server 2008 R2.

13.  Click on the Start button on the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager. The Windows Server 2008 R2 is loading and start to install on the VM

14. Select English as the language to install.  The installation process will take about 10 minutes.

15. First time login, you need to enter a strong password for the Administrator account.

 "Hello001" 

Configure the Domain Controller

At this point, your Server is liked and Desktop. On start the Initial Configuration Tasks appears for configuring the server.

16. Setting the time zone.