vSphere-WinServ-Deployment

Overview

The goal of this project is to deploy a ready-to-go windows server environment. This includes a domain controller, a replica domain controller, a DHCP server, and a fileserver. Additionally setting up users, groups, and OUs for the respective users within the domain.
To complete this project, 3 steps are taken.

1. Use Packer to spin up a sys prepped and fully updated windows server 2022 iso for the environemnt
2. Use Terraform to deploy 4 virtual machines into a vSphere environment
3. Use Ansible to configure these 4 virtual machines as desired

1. Packer’s Role:

Create a Windows Server 2022 .iso that is updated and has VMTools installed by default using Packer. In this solution, it will be geared to usage with vSphere, a VMware product.

First: Packer uses autounattend.xml and sysprep-autounattend.xml to automate Windows Settings

• It pulls Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Eval Edition (Desktop Experience) from Microsoft’s site
• Installs & configure OpenSSH Client & Server for remote connection
• Installs VMware tools from ISO provided from the build ESX server

Packer Provisioner Steps

• Updating OS via Windows Update
• Doing some OS adjustments
  • Set Windows telemetry settings to minimum
  • Show file extentions by default
  • Install Chocolatey - a Windows package manager
    • Install Microsoft Edge (Chromium)
    • Install Win32-OpenSSH-Server
    • Install PowerShell Core
    • Install 7-Zip
    • Install Notepad++
  • Enable Powershell-Core (pwsh) to be the default SSHD shell
• Cleanup tasks
• Remove CDROM drives from VM template (otherwise there would be 2)

2. Terraform’s Role:

Main role: Deploy the Virtual Machines

• Setup the four Windows Servers (Primary Domain Controller, Replica Domain Controller, DHCP, Fileshare)
  • Using the vSphere provider:
    • Assign appropriate resources to each machine
• Once prepared with appropriate values and the networking is in place:
  • Navigate to the Terraform directory and run these commands
  • terraform init Pull proper Terraform providers and modules used
  • terraform validate This will return whether the configuration is valid or not
  • terraform apply … yes Actually apply the configuration

Terraform Variable files

• variables.tf
  • Declare variables that will be used with the Terraform configuration
• terraform.tfvars
  • Assign variables that will be used with the Terraform configuration

3. Ansible’s Role:

Main role: Configure the deployed Virtual Machines.

• Setup Windows Server Feature: Domain
  • Primary Domain Controller
  • Replica Domain Controller
  • Auto-Join the Virutal Machines to the respective Domain created
  • Create a few users and groups within Active Directory
• Setup Windows Ssrver Feature: DHCP
  • Setup DHCP Scope
  • Authorize it to the Domain.
• Setup Windows Server Feature: File Sharing
  • Create two shares
    • An employee share and administrator share. These shares are assigned group permissions.
• Common Configurations
  • Enable RDP and allow it through the firewall on all windows servers created

Ansible Variable files

• inventory.yml
  • Modify hosts associated with the playbook. Assign the IP addressing.
• winlab.yml
  • Associate ‘roles’ to the hosts identified in the inventory file.
  • These ‘roles’ are folders within the directory containing a set of code to configure per host
• ansible.cfg
  • Tells ansible variable information. In this scenario, identifies to use inventory.yml file.
• ./group_vars/all.yml
  • Contains specific variable information used within the ./roles/* Ansible code.

Prerequisites

• Linux machine with the following
  • Ansible
    • sudo apt update
    • sudo apt install software-properties-common
    • sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
    • sudo apt install ansible
  • Terraform
    • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y gnupg software-properties-common curl
    • curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
    • sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"
    • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install terraform
  • Packer
    • curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
    • sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"
    • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install packer
  • Git
    • sudo apt-get install git
• A Code Interprester
  • I recommend Visual-Studio-Code
• vSphere Lab Environment
  • vSphere — Note: This project is using vSphere version 7.0.0
    

Packer

Navigate to Packer Directory

• First setup Packer environment
  • packer init -upgrade ws2022.pkr.hcl
• Then apply the Packer configuration to create the Windows Server 2022 Image
  • packer build -timestamp-ui -force -var-file=myvarfile.json ws2022.pkr.hcl

• This packer execute pulls the newest windows server datacenter 2022 eval .iso from microsoft populates it into the vSphere environment, in the specified datacenter/cluster/host/datastore
• It then runs commands to: Grab DHCP, Updates the image, Enables SSH, Enables RDP, Configures necessary firewall settings, sets passwords/usernames, & installs VMware Tools to base image
• Additionally, it will install Chocolatey for packages, notepad++, Edge, & 7-zip
  

After Packer Finishes

Roughly an hour depending on processing and internet speed

• Go into your vSphere and turn the resulting VM into a Template
  • Ensure this mimics the variables you have set in the terraform.tfvars file. This will be our next step.

Terraform

Navigate to Terraform Directory

• Setup Terraform Environemnt
  • terraform init
• Format terraform to ensure it meets criteria required
  • terraform fmt
• Do a terraform plan to detect any potential errors in code and to see potential end result. Read over this
  • terraform plan
• Finally, if all the above appears correct, perform a terraform apply
  • terraform apply … yes
    • This may take awhile, once it is done, double check in vSphere all necessary Virtual Machines were created properly (For me this took 20 minutes to fully complete)

Ansible

Navigate to Ansible Directory

• Once you have allowed Terraform to finish its configuraiton:
  • Navigate to your Ansible Directory, cd <path-to-Ansible>
  • Run your ansible playbook ansible-playbook winlab.yml
    • This should run through and detail each change as it plays out

References Used/Useful Links

I sourced various code and peices of information from the following Git Repositories

• Stefan Zimmermann GitLab Article
• Dmitry Teslya GitHub

Useful places for refernece

• Tutorials for Terraform, Packer, and others Hashicorp-Tutorials
• Ansible Documentation
  • Windows-Modules
• Terraform Documentation
• Packer Documentation