Automating Active Directory Setup - Installing the Active Directory Domain Services Role

I've been working on a OSD task sequence to deploy Active Directory in a Windows 2012 environment for my current customer.  They have many environments in production, and many more in the development, testing and quality assurance environments, so this is something they need to be automated and repeatable.

The screen sot below shows the snippet of a larger task sequence that installs many different roles, features, and applications all in one task sequence.  Variables assigned to the computer object when we provision the computer object in Configuration Manager drive what roles, features and applications get installed.  I'm not going to show how that works here, but it may be something I explain in separate posts at some stage.

The first step to install Active Directory is to install the Active Directory Domain Services role.  The screen shots below show how that is done in the task sequence.  I just use Windows PowerShell to do this with the following command:

#-----------
PowerShell.exe -COMMAND Install-WindowsFeature -Name AD-Domain-Services `
   -IncludeManagementTools

The code above does not create an domain controller. It just installs the Active Directory Domain Services role.  Other steps in the task sequence see the server promoted to be a domain controller.

Including the 'IncludeManagementTools' option sees the appropriate management tools, and Windows PowerShell modules, get installed.  This works on both the standard and core installations of Windows, with the installer being intelligent enough to know what to install base on what edition of Windows Server is being installed.

Task Sequence Snippet:  Active Directory Installation

Installing the Active Directory Domain Services Role with Windows PowerShell