Building a Windows domain at home on Windows 11 Home

I wanted a safe place to practise everything I do at work: servers, DNS, DHCP and domain logins. My laptop runs Windows 11 Home, which has no Hyper-V. Here's how I built a working domain anyway.

The kit

• A laptop with 32 GB of RAM and plenty of free SSD space
• VMware Workstation Pro, which is now free for personal, educational and commercial use
• The free 180-day Windows Server 2025 evaluation
• The free 90-day Windows 11 Enterprise evaluation for test PCs

One tip before anything else: keep virtual machines out of OneDrive. VMware's default folder sits inside Documents, and OneDrive will try to sync huge, constantly changing VM files. I use C:\VMs instead.

The design

Everything lives on VMware's private NAT network, so the lab can't touch my home network or its router.

The build, in order

1. Install Windows Server with the Desktop Experience option. Without it you get Server Core, a command line only.
2. Fix the basics: VMware Tools, the UK time zone, activation and a sensible name (DC01). Wrong time breaks domain logins later, because Kerberos is strict about clocks.
3. Set a static IP. A server that changes address breaks drive maps, printers and logins for everyone.
4. Add the roles: Active Directory Domain Services, DNS and DHCP.
5. Promote to a domain controller with a new forest called elshadai.internal. The .internal ending is reserved for private networks, so it can never clash with a real website.
6. Sort out DNS: point the DC at itself, add forwarders (1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8) for internet names, and create a reverse lookup zone.
7. Switch on DHCP: turn off VMware's own DHCP first (two DHCP servers on one network cause chaos), then authorise the server and create a scope with the gateway and DNS options.

Problems I hit

• "No Media" at boot. The ISO was selected but Connect at power on wasn't ticked.
• The clock was eight hours out. The server defaulted to US Pacific time.
• I opened network settings on the wrong machine. The window was on my laptop, not the VM. Always check which machine you're on before changing anything.

Proving it works

nslookup elshadai.internal   # answered by DC01: 192.168.87.10
nslookup bbc.co.uk           # answered via the forwarders
ipconfig /all                # on CL01: IP, gateway and DNS all from DC01

Seeing a test PC pick up its address from my own DHCP server was the moment it all clicked. Next up: joining the PCs to the domain and building Group Policy.