Use Packer and Vagrant to Create a Local MDT Lab

Uses Packer and Vagrant to create a local MDT lab leveraging Automation Framework Community Edition running on Virtual Box.

Located here: https://github.com/ryancbutler/mdt-lab-vagrant

Creates the following

• 2019 Datacenter image created via Packer
• 2019 Domain controller via Vagrant
• 2019 MDT server via Vagrant
  • DHCP server and scope
  • AFCE installed
  • WDS (Windows Deployment Services) installed, patched and configured

Big thanks

• Trond Eirik Haavarstein for dedicating a massive amount of time for making MDT super easy to get started with. Check out the paid version of Automation Framework for even more automation goodness.
  • https://github.com/haavarstein/Automation-Framework-Community-Edition/
• Rui Lopes for so many awesome Packer and Vagrant scripts used for this.
  • https://github.com/rgl/windows-vagrant
  • https://github.com/rgl/windows-domain-controller-vagrant

Pre-Reqs

The following needs to be done on the local PC:

• Clone git clone https://github.com/ryancbutler/mdt-lab-vagrant.git or download https://github.com/ryancbutler/mdt-lab-vagrant/archive/master.zip this repo
• Download and copy a Windows 2019 Eval ISO to repo dir (eg “C:\mdt-lab-vagrant")
• Virtualbox installed
• Vagrant installed
• Packer installed

Note: All these can be installed with choco

#Install choco if needed
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

choco install -y virtualbox packer vagrant

Vagrant Plugins

• vagrant-windows-sysprep

vagrant plugin install vagrant-windows-sysprep

Packer Plugins

• packer-provisioner-windows-update

choco install packer-provisioner-windows-update

Build Windows 2019 Image

First we need to build the 2019 Datacenter image using Packer. This can take awhile.

cd packer
packer build -only=windows-2019-amd64-virtualbox windows-2019.json
#When completed
vagrant box add --name "windows-2019-amd64" -f windows-2019-amd64-virtualbox.box

Virtual Box Setup

While the image builds we can adjust our virtual box network and create our temp machine

Network

DHCP must be disabled on the 192.168.56.0/24 Virtual Box host-only network

Test VM

This VM will be used to actually test MDT with

• Create a new VM

• Adjust memory anything you can spare. 2GB should work.
• Create a new virtual disk with VDI (format doesn’t really matter)
  • Dynamically allocated
  • Suggest 40gb plus for size
• After machine is created select Settings and Network on the left
  • Set adapter 1 to host-only

  

  • Set adapter 2 to NAT (this will allow internet access)

  

Run Vagrant

This will deploy the environment using the Packer image created earlier

#If still in Packer dir
cd ..
#From repo root
#may need to run as admin
vagrant up

Connecting

• Once the Vagrant deployment is complete you can access the MDT server with vagrant rdp mdt or vagrant powershell mdt
• mylab\vagrant can be used for authentication
  • Configured as Domain and Enterprise admin
• Local administrator password is set to P@ssw0rd

Test MDT

• Boot your test VM and
• Cancel the intial boot disk screen (only shows once)
• Press F12 at the bios screen
• Select l to boot from lan
• PXE process should pickup from here
• Happy labbing

Power environment down

vagrant halt

Destroy Environment

vagrant destroy -f