Windows World Test Environment

While kicking back this weekend I started re-building my Windows test environment I have in VMs. It had been a bit since I had used it - last practicing disaster recovery for AD and Exchange 2000/2003. While all my test servers were functioning, I couldn't really be sure of the state they were in. So I shuffled a few things around and built up two Windows 2000 Domain Controllers, two Windows 2003 Server member servers and an XP client. I started with 2000 AD as it is time for me to play a bit with some AD upgrades. I also need to get Exchange into the mix when I have a moment.

Usually I just populate my test environments with a handful of accounts. This time I wanted to get more in the ballpark of 100 accounts up and running. I ended up using the dsadd tool from the Windows 2003 box to add the accounts to AD. By using Excel I was able to build up 100 dsadd command lines to paste into a script file. Very brute force, but it works! When I get time I might tweak the script a bit and build it up via a for loop to make future script tweaks easier. Here is the dsadd command I used (posting here more as a reminder to myself than usefulness to others):

dsadd user CN=test10,CN=Users,DC=ANSALON,DC=KRYNN,DC=local /
-samid test10 -upn test10 -pwd insertpasshere -fn Test -ln Ten /
-display "Test Ten" -s GOLDMOON

Seems to have worked quite well.