Active Directory and DNS Design for My VCF Homelab

Overview

My VCF homelab uses Windows Server Active Directory and DNS on two physical Intel NUC domain controllers. This post outlines that design and the hostname planning for infrastructure services, with separate resources for Windows domain setup and Photon OS DNS.

Photon OS can host a DNS server for hostname resolution. The linked Photon guide covers that DNS role; it does not configure an Active Directory domain controller or provide equivalent directory, domain authentication and Group Policy services. My Windows domain controllers provide AD DS as well as DNS. See Microsoft’s AD DS overview for the directory-service responsibilities. If you only need a separate DNS service, the Photon guide below is a useful starting point:

Domain controller design

As for my Windows Servers, I am going to have 2 Intel NUCs serve as my physical domain controllers for my network just so I have redundancy and really because I have the hardware available to do it so why not.

You can see in the image above, this is a very basic deployment of Active Directory and those domain controllers will also have the DNS role installed. If you are not familiar with Windows Server AD/DNS then check out this blog below for a step-by-step guide.
https://www.itechguides.com/how-to-setup-a-windows-server-2022-ad-domain-step-by-step/

Plan infrastructure hostnames

Once I have built my domain, I will spend some time figuring out the IPs and hostnames for all the virtual machines I will need to complete a VMware Cloud Foundation deployment and the additional components I need to support that deployment. A basic list of hostnames that will be needed are:

• Certificate Authority
• SFTP Server
• VCF installer appliance
• VCF offline depot (optional)
• vCenter appliance
• NSX appliance
• Fleet Operations appliance
• VCF Operations appliance
• VCF Operations Collector appliance
• VCF Automation appliance
• VCF Operations for Log appliance
• SDDC Manager
• NSX Edge nodes
• vSphere Hosts