mykems / ws2016lab

Windows Server 2016 rapid lab deployment scripts

Project Description

Deployment Automation of Windows Server 2016 labs on WS2016/Windows10 Hyper-V

Simply deploy your lab just with these scripts and ISO file.

This solution is used in Microsoft Premier Workshop for Software Defined Storage.

Check this page for end to end scenarios!

Videos

• 1 Lab Hydration
• 2 Lab Deployment
• 3 S2D Scenario
• 4 Bonus-S2D to S2D Storage Replica Scenario

Usage (more info in wiki )

Step 1 Download required files (prerequisities):

• Scripts
• Windows Server 2016
• Latest Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2016.

Step 2 Create folder and Unzip scripts there

Step 3 Right-click and run with PowerShell 1_Prereq.ps1

• 1_Prereq.ps1 will create folder structure (if you want to run second script without asking for files, you can copy iso and CU there) and downloads neccessary files from internet
• If you don't have an internet connection on your server, run this on internet connected machine, copy created files over and run 1_prereq.ps1 again

Step 4 Right-click and run with PowerShell 2_CreateParentDisks.ps1

• 2_CreateParentDisks.ps1 will check if you have Hyper-V installed, it will prompt you for Windows Server 2016 ISO file, Cumulative Update and then will hydrate parent disks and Domain Controller.
• When selecting updates, rename them that they are sorted (Prerequisite update first, Cumulative Update second)

Step 5 Right-click and run with PowerShell 3_Deploy.ps1

• 3_Deploy.ps1 will deploy S2D Hyperconverged scenario defined in Labconfig.ps1 different examples

Step 6 Continue with S2D Hyperconverged Scenario

• This scenario will help you understand new Windows Server 2016 feature called Storage Spaces Direct.

• It will deploy 4 nanoservers simulating 200TB Storage

Step 7 Cleanup lab with Cleanup.ps1

Step 8 Try different scenarios

• Local Admin Password solution for NanoServer
• Testing Nano first boot performance

What's in the lab

Automatically hydrated Domain Controller with DHCP and one scope. There are several accounts automatically provisioned - SQL Run As Account, SQL Agent Account, VMM Service Account and one additional Domain Admin with name you can specify, so you can install SQL + SC VMM easily.

You can then modify LabConfig.ps1 to hydrate whatever you want. Like this 4 node nano s2d cluster with 200TB capacity - all running on ultrabook.

Known issues

• DISM does not work on Cluster Shared Volumes
• When waiting on DC to come online, the script trows some red errors. It's by design, nothing to worry about.
• DISM sometimes throws errors on NTFS volumes also. Just build the lab again in different folder.
• sometimes if all machines are started at once, some are not domain joined. Just cleanup and deploy again.

So what is it good for?

Simulations such as

• how to script against nano servers
• how to automate configuration
• what will happen when I run this and that command
• how change drive in S2D cluster
• what will happen when one node goes down
• testing new features before pushing to production
• ...