Workshop Exercise 2.1 - Active Directory Automation Part 1

Table of Contents

• Objective
• Step 1 - Wait for Connectivity
• Step 2 - Setting the System Hostnames
• Step 3 - Creating the AD Forest

Objective

• Create automation to setup an AD environment
• Store code in repository

Step 1 - Wait for Connectivity

The following exercises are going to involve creating playbooks that will configure our new Windows systems, and install Active Directory. Later on, we’ll tie them all together using a workflow.

To start, we’ll create a playbook that waits for the VMs to be available. Create a new directory in your code repository called playbooks, and add a new file called wait-for-connectivity.yaml with the following contents:

---
- name: Wait for systems to be available
  hosts:
    - all
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: Wait for connectivity
      ansible.builtin.wait_for_connection:
        timeout: 600

This will ensure the VMs can be contacted before attempting the next steps.

Step 2 - Setting the System Hostnames

Create a new file in the playbooks/ directory called set-base-configs.yaml, and add the following contents:

---
- name: Set some basic system configs
  hosts:
    - all
  tasks:
    - name: Set the system hostname
      ansible.windows.win_hostname:
        name: "{{ inventory_hostname }}"
      notify:
        - reboot

  handlers:
    - name: Reboot system
      ansible.windows.win_reboot:
      listen:
        - reboot

This will set the hostname of the systems, and since they’re Windows, they’ll reboot if a change is made.

Step 3 - Creating the AD Forest

Create another file in the playbooks/ directory named create-ad-forest.yaml, and add the following contents:

---
- name: Create Active Directory forest
  hosts:
    - all
  tasks:
    - name: Create AD forest/domain
      microsoft.ad.domain:
        dns_domain_name: "{{ active_directory.dns_domain_name }}"
        safe_mode_password: "{{ ansible_password }}"
        domain_netbios_name: "{{ active_directory.domain_netbios_name | default(omit) }}"
        reboot: true

A few quick notes about this playbook:

• This playbook should only be run against the first domain controller in a forest, however we’re not setting a limit on it here, we’ll set it in the job template in Controller - this is a best practice, as we don’t want to limit the portability of our automation, instead, we want to use Controller for that.
• Some variables are used here, these have been pre-set for you within Controller. To review them, access the Ansible Controller web interface, select your team’s Active Directory Infrastructure inventory and review the Variables field.

With these playbooks, we’ll have created and configured an Active Directory forest on a single system. In the next exercise, we’ll add our secondary domain controller.

---

Navigation

Previous Exercise

Next Exercise

Click here to return to the Workshop Homepage