Eric Bello

IT & Cloud Infrastructure

A home lab built to simulate a small enterprise IT environment using Windows Server and Active Directory — designed to practice the kinds of identity and access management tasks that come up daily in help desk and sysadmin roles.

What I Built

Set up a Windows Server virtual machine running Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), then configured users, groups, organizational units (OUs), and Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to reflect a realistic small business structure.

What I Practiced

  • User and group management — creating accounts, assigning roles, managing permissions
  • Group Policy — deploying and testing GPOs across OUs
  • Help desk workflows — account provisioning, password resets, access troubleshooting
  • DNS and DHCP — configuring name resolution and address assignment within the domain
  • Virtualization — running the lab environment using VMware Fusion on macOS

Why It Matters

Most help desk and IT support roles expect familiarity with Active Directory from day one. This lab gave me hands-on reps in a safe environment where I could break things, fix them, and understand why — without any production risk.

Tools Used

  • Windows Server 2022
  • Active Directory Domain Services
  • VMware Fusion
  • DNS / DHCP
  • Group Policy Management Console (GPMC)