Building Windows Server with Puppet and Chocolatey

May 5, 2015 cloud configuration-management devops puppet windows-server 2015
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Forget using scripts and group policies to configure a new Windows Server machine. Using Chocolatey and Puppet, you can do it faster & easier than ever (and it’s more fun too). This is especially true if you’re using a Server Core installation and don’t have a GUI to help you along. Oh, and if you don’t know Puppet, you really should watch my course Puppet Fundamentals for System Administrators on Pluralsight 🙂

Assign IP address using PowerShell:

1$ New-NetIPAddress –InterfaceAlias "Ethernet" –IPAddress "192.168.51.29" –PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway 192.168.51.8
2
3$ Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet" -ServerAddresses 192.168.50.20, 192.168.50.21

Install Chocolatey:

1$ set-executionpolicy unrestricted<br />
2$ iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Restart PowerShell

Install VMware tools

1$ choco install vmware-tools
The server will automatically restart.

Rename server

1$ rename-computer -newname newservername

Reboot

1restart-computer
Join to domain 
1add-computer -domain benpiper.com
Reboot again 
1restart-computer
Install Puppet 
1choco install puppet
Configure Puppet 
1Configure c:\programdata\puppetlabs\puppet\etc\puppet.conf
Generate puppet certificate 
1puppet_interactive
Sign puppet certificate on puppet master 
1puppet cert sign newservername
Apply appropriate profiles to server. Remember to restart the Puppet master if you change your Hiera configuration.

Run Puppet agent 

1puppet_interactive
Verify 
1puppet resource dism
2puppet resource package