Johan has maintained his Hydration Kits to help us quickly and easily deploy a ConfigMgr lab for many years now and I’m excited to help take these amazing kits even further by adding some additional customizations and enhancements to test more scenarios, speed up deployment, and customize the kits more easily.
Last year we added optional steps for automatically configuring a Configuration Manager Reporting Services Point, Software Update Point, WSUS installation and optimization, introduced the Server 2022 kit, and updated New-LabVMsForHyperV.ps1 with the flexibility to choose specific VMs.
This year, we’ve added several improvements to the 2019 kit:
- Customize the SQL sysadmin account
- Changed the authorize DHCP VBScript to PowerShell
- Changed the default network from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.25.0/24
I’m especially excited about changing the default network because this will cause less confusion and conflict when deploying the kit alongside many home networks.
In the coming weeks, I will be working on the following changes and a follow up blogpost:
- Change the default network from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.25.0/24 (2022 Kit)
- Add multiple Windows 10/11 sequences for easier client testing (Both kits)
- Continued replacement of MDT applications using VBScripts with equivalent PowerShell scripts (Both kits)
- Logging module that removes logging functions from individual scripts (Both kits)
- Additional improvements to the New-LabVMsforHyperV.ps1 script (Both kits)
And finally, another addition to both kits that I’m very excited about, is Matt Benninge’s (https://twitter.com/matbg) updates to his Hydration Kit customization script and its’ inclusion directly in the Hydration Kit for the first time. This script provides an easier way to customize IP addresses, domain and OU structure, passwords, and more. This is very helpful for customizing the kit to your own specifications, especially if you are going to be running a Microsoft 365 lab with a custom domain alongside this kit.
I’d also like to shout out our friend Harjit Dhaliwal (https://twitter.com/Hoorge) for spending some time to provide feedback that led to many of these improvements. Thanks for the great conversation, Harjit!
You can find the latest versions of both kits here:
Hydration Kit For Windows Server 2022, SQL Server 2019 and ConfigMgr Current Branch
https://github.com/DeploymentResearch/HydrationKitWS2022
Hydration Kit For Windows Server 2019, SQL Server 2017 and ConfigMgr Current Branch
https://github.com/DeploymentResearch/HydrationKitWS
Great updates. Thanks!