The next step in our journey to an Azure SharePoint 2019 environment is to build Active Directory. You actually have a couple of options here in that you could integrate directly with Azure Active Directory or you can build a domain controller and create your active directory that way.  Because my end state for this environment is to actually build a hybrid environment I want to build a full domain controller.  This means we are going to provision a VM, install Windows Server 2016 and create an active directory.

This is a multi-part series.  You can see what is coming and review other posts in the series by clicking one of the following links:

Building a SharePoint 2019 MinRole Environment in Microsoft Azure – Creating the Domain Controller

The first step is to determine the server type you want to use.  Azure when creating a new Windows 2019 Datacenter VM defaults to a standard DS1 (v2) server which has a monthly cost of $72 CAD.  If you have a corporate account that you can charge this to, then fill your boots and continue on.  Myself, I am going to make this as minimal as possible.  While the environment is just a dev environment and won’t be turned on all the time, I don’t want to burn through available credits too fast.  So with that in mind, we are going to limit things a bit and create an B1ms server for the domain controller.  We can get away this because the domain is going to be very small with very little load against it.  If this was going to be used for anything more than dev, I would utilize a larger server.

  1. Click on Virtual Machines along the left-hand side and then click +Add.
  2. Select your subscription and the Resource Group created for this farm.
  3. Give your VM a name, select the region and availability options (I selected no redundancy)
  4. Next select the OS you wish to install (Windows Server 2019 Datacenter).
  5. Update the size of the VM image (B1ms as stated above)
  6. Next you want to put in your admin account and password as Azure will be building the OS installation for you.
  7. Leave the Inbound port rules to None (default)
  8. Next is a section called “Save Money“.  Here you can indicate if you need to purchase an OS license with you server or not.  If you have an available license select Yes.  Then click in the box labeled Confirmation to indicate you are stating you have a license.

Building a SharePoint 2019 MinRole Environment in Microsoft Azure - Creating the Domain Controller - VM Info

  1. Click “Next: Disks.”
  2. Because this is a dev environment I chose to go with standard disks instead of premium.  You can change the selection at the OS disk type selection.
  3. We will need to add a disk as Azure only creates an OS disk.  Everything else needs to go on the data disk.
    • Click on Create and attach a new disk.
      • Disk Type: Standard SSD
      • Name: Can use the default if you want (ServerName-DataDisk-1) or change it if you wish.
      • Size: 40GB (or more depending on if you are adding other resources to this server).
    • Click Ok.

Building a SharePoint 2019 MinRole Environment in Microsoft Azure - Creating the Domain Controller - Disk Info    Building a SharePoint 2019 MinRole Environment in Microsoft Azure - Creating the Domain Controller - Create a New Disk

  1. Click “Next: Networking”
  2. Here you build your network connections.  Select the following options:
    • Virtual network: network you created previously for this resource group (I created SP2019-net)
    • Subnet: Use the default
    • Public IP; Use the default
    • NIC network security group: Basic
    • Public inbound ports: None
    • Accelerated networking: Off
    • Load Balancing: No

Building a SharePoint 2019 MinRole Environment in Microsoft Azure - Creating the Domain Controller - Network Information

  1. Click “Next: Management”
  2. In this section, configure your VM Management settings
    • Boot Diagnostics: On
    • OS Guest Diagnostics: Off
    • Diagnostics Storage account: name of storage account you created for AD
    • System Assigned Managed Identity: Off
    • Enable auto-shutdown: Yes (unless you want it running all the time)
    • Shutdown time: select the time of day you wish to shut down your VM if turned on.
    • Time Zone: Select your time zone
    • Notification before shutdown: No

Building a SharePoint 2019 MinRole Environment in Microsoft Azure - Creating the Domain Controller - VM Management Info

  1. Click “Next: Advanced”
  2. Here you can add any resources (some as a service) you may require (virus scan, extensions for scripting, etc).  In this case we don’t really need any so click “Next: Tags”.
  3. Add any tags you require for this VM.
  4. Click “Next: Review + Create”
  5. Review the settings and handle any errors (if any) the Azure wizard reports.
  6. Click Create and wait for deployment to complete.
  7. After 4-5 min the deployment should be complete.  You can now view the VM by clicking “View the Resource”.  Click on that button now.

Next we need to configure the server’s network settings

Thanks for reading!