How to setup a Active Directory environment test?

Question

The project I´m working on needs to auth its users against AD, and as a fallback check against its own user base. Now I need to test it outside the production environment.

Answer 1

Is this environment suppose to simulate as many ActiveDirectory installations as possible, or is it to just test that authentication works against a DC?

At a minimum, you will want to setup two Domain Controllers, a Primary and a Secondary. You will want to also setup accounts with a variety of account states (password expired, account expired, account lockout, etc).

Some other issues to think about:

Is your domain running as a Win2000 functional Domain? or a Windows 2003 functional Domain? If you have multiple domains, will you support Universal Group membership? If you have multiple forrests, will you support Cross-Forest Trust relationships?

Answer 2

You should think about multi-domain and multi-forest environments, as well as just having multiple domain controllers in the domain you're authenticating against. You're going to need more than a single VM to do that.