Windows Server, Active Directory, and PowerShell

This course takes a careful beginner to someone who can stand up and run a small Windows environment safely. You work with **Windows Server 2022** on two lab machines — a domain controller `dc01` and a member server `member01` — and you build a **dedicated, isolated training domain** (`ultilab.local`) that is never joined or trusted to any real corporate domain. You start with Windows Server editions, installation, and the two ways every task gets done — the graphical console and **PowerShell**, the language this course treats as the primary admin tool. You learn PowerShell properly: cmdlets, the object pipeline, help, scripting, and remoting. From there you add server roles and features, provision storage with NTFS and share permissions, and configure IP, a DNS server, and a DHCP scope. The heart of the course is Active Directory: what a domain, tree, and forest are; promoting `dc01`; organising users, groups, and OUs and delegating administration; Group Policy and how it is scoped and troubleshot; and how DNS and DHCP integrate with the directory. You finish with administration at scale in PowerShell and with the operational discipline of backup, recovery, and safe change. Every pure-PowerShell command in the course was executed on PowerShell 7 and its output is real. Windows-only steps (Server Manager, AD DS promotion, the ActiveDirectory module, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy, storage, and backup) are written out precisely, syntax-verified, and documentation-checked against Microsoft Learn, with `[SCREENSHOT: ...]` placeholders where a real screen matters — so the text stands on its own before the hosted Windows lab is available. The course ends with a project: build and document the whole isolated training domain and hand over an operations runbook.