manderson-it / ansible-win-ad

Install Active Directory for demo and labbing purposes only

Ansible - Active Directory

Install Active Directory (AD) for demo or labbing purposes on a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard.

Requirements for VM

• VM with Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
• Proper DNS (important for AD)
• Allow SSH for Ansible
• Configure WinRM on Windows Server with https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1

Requirements on Ansible controller

Ensure required packages are present.

# Ubuntu 20.04
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -Vy vim git screen wget telnet python3-pip
sudo apt install -Vy python3.8-venv
mkdir python-virtual-environments && cd python-virtual-environments
python3 -m venv ansible
source ~/python-virtual-environments/ansible/bin/activate
pip3 install ansible-lint ansible
pip3 install "pywinrm>=0.2.2"

Ensure your BASH is recent on MacOS, otherwise globstar does not work.

brew install bash
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash
sudo bash -c 'echo /usr/local/bin/bash >> /etc/shells'
ln -s /usr/local/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/bash-terminal-app

• pip install ansible-lint Linting used in combination with Git pre-commit hooks
• pip install pre-commit to run Git pre-commit hooks
• (optional) If using Python virtual environment (venv), then run source ~/venvs/ansible/bin/activate

Keep in mind, pre-commit run (with no additional arguments) only runs against currently staged files.

Edit the inventory

Fill the following vars that are required by the Ansible roles.

# fill these vars
# example values below
win_ad_install_ad_domain_name: "adfs2.manderson-it.ca" # FQDN ad1.mydomain.ca
win_ad_install_ad_netbios_name: "adir" # Until first dot of FQDN
password_for_all="" # used by role win_ad_user 

Run Playbooks

Playbooks are run against the Windows machine. Make sure you meet the above requirements. Append -u gcp_user_for_windows to below ansible-playbook commands.

ansible-playbook playbooks/win_deploy_ad.yml
ansible-playbook playbooks/win_ad_users_groups.yml
ansible-playbook playbooks/win_ssh_server.yml
ansible-playbook playbooks/win_ping.yml

If you run Ansible from macOS: macOS has some Python bug, which results in the following output when calling an Ansible playbook with win_ping, for example.

[__NSPlaceholderDate initialize] may have been in progress in another thread when fork() was called

If you see this error on macOS, export the following environment variable before running the playbook.

# Might be needed on MacOS due to a Python bug
export OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=YES