I’m curious as to why someone would need to do that short of having a bunch of users and a small office at home. Or maybe managing the family’s computers is easier that way?

I was considering a domain controller (biased towards linux since most servers/VMs are linux) but right now, for the homelab, it just seems like a shiny new toy to play with rather than something that can make life easier/more secure. There’s also the problem of HA and being locked out of your computer if the DC is down.

Tell me why you’re running it and the setup you’ve got that makes having a DC worth it.

Thanks!

  • cm0002@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    9 months ago

    I do, for a multitude of reasons

    • Easier management of family computers
    • an authoritative source for Authentik SSO
    • Learning experience, I’m also heavy Linux, but I try to maintain an OS agnostic philosophy with my skill set so I can have options in my career
    • I was bored
    • Again, since I like to maintain an OS agnostic philosophy I have a healthy mix of Windows, Linux and MacOS devices, and you CAN in fact join Linux (w/ SSSD) and MacOS to a domain too

    In addition to what others have said with roaming profiles and such:

    DO NOT SET YOUR AD DOMAIN AS THE SAME DOMAIN OF A WEB ADDRESS YOU USE

    I…er…someone… Found themselves in this situation and have been in a mess since lmao

    • OCT0PUSCRIME@lemmy.moorenet.casa
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      9 months ago

      Can you explain your disclaimer? You suggest not setting your AD domain to a web address you use, like one for self hosted sites? So you buy 2 domains, one for AD and one for sites? Or you use an internal domain for AD?

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        9 months ago

        AD is heavily reliant on the DNS protocol, so heavily in fact that a large component of an AD deployment is a DNS server.

        So basically, when the AD DNS server takes over on your network It’ll do DNS things as you’d expect, when it gets a DNS call with the AD domain it will answer with the AD server every time

        If your AD domain and your web address domain are domain.com then whenever the AD DNS server gets theh call it won’t answer with the IP address of the web server, it’ll answer with the AD server, even when you are trying to access a web service like domain.com/Plex or something.

        You can change the DNS server used on the host, but then you’ll be borkin domain functionality in weird ways

        Yea, you’d want an entirely different domain or an internal like domain.lan or in my case what I should have done is made it a subdomain like ad.domain.com

        And also it’s a bitch to change the AD domain once you get it all setup hence I’ve been procrastinating with hosts file workarounds lmfao

          • Xakuterie@dormi.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            9 months ago

            If I remember correctly that is best practise, no? It was something.local or *.intern for years, until TLDs could be whatever you wanted them to be.

            • nottelling@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              9 months ago

              .local is reserved for mDNS responses, don’t use that.

              It’s more than best practice. Your active directory controllers want to be the resolvers for their members, separate from other zones such as external MX records or the like. Your AD domain should always be a separate zone, aka a subdomain. “ad.example.com”.

              If your DCs are controlling members at the top level, you’ll eventually run into problems with Internet facing services and public NS records.

              Also per below. You can’t get commercially signed certificates for fake domains. Self hosting certificate authorities is a massive pain in the ass. Don’t try unless you have a real need, like work-related learning.

      • RedFox
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        9 months ago

        All the descriptions are right and techniques. Microsoft sometimes refers to this is split-brain and their documentation.

        Organizations that choose not to do that use an active directory specific subdomain like some of the other comments mentioned. Example: adds. Company.tld.

        Computer1.adds.company.tld. Dc1.adds.cimoany.tld.

        Others doing split domain are

        Adds.company.internal

      • jemikwa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        In shorter terms to what the other comment said, your website won’t work in networks that use DNS served by your DC. The website is fine on the Internet, but less so at home or at an office/on a VPN if you’re an enterprise.
        “I can’t go to example.com on the VPN!” was a semi common ticket at my last company 🙃

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Thank you for the wonderful comment.

      Indeed, I was hoping to have a good SSO setup alongside learning about AD and domain services (also looking at the *nix alternatives like FreeIPA).

      Could you tell me more about the DNS setup with regards to AD? I’d like to use my own DNS and not have AD be the DNS provider in my network. The idea to put it in its own subdomain is excellent and I’ll remember that.

      People here also mention an increase in attack surface and security vulnerabilities in running AD/domain services on a network. Now, I agree that letting free access to the domain server and having rogue accounts causing havoc on the network is not great, but I’d like to know more. What has been your experience?

  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    9 months ago

    You’re overlooking a very common reason that people setup a homelab - practice for their careers. Many colleges offer a more legitimate setup for the same purpose, and a similar design. But if you’re choosing to learn AD from a free/cheap book instead of a multi-thousand dollar course, you still need a lab to absorb the information and really understand it.

    Granted, AD is of limited value to learn these days, but it’s still a backbone for countless other tools that are highly relevant.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      Learning was definitely a goal, but I’d like to actually find use for what I’m hosting than just “learning”, which would affect my motivation and I’d probably delete it right away if I didn’t get much use out of it

  • mikyopii@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    9 months ago

    I ran it previously because I came from that world and I just thought that’s what you did. I was less Linux-y then. It’s really overkill for such a small network but if you want to learn AD then it might be worth it. Personally I hope to never look at AD again but alas I need moneyz.

    If you do decide to run it make sure you enable profile caching in group policy, it will prevent you from being locked out when your DC is down. Also if you have laptops you can safely bring them outside your network and they will still be able to log in.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      9 months ago

      Oh, that’s a great idea. I always wondered how I would be able to log into my work laptop even without being connected to the company network; now I know why!

      Would love more tips if you would have them for someone very new to AD!

  • assembly@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    9 months ago

    I run AD at home but it’s because my job is in enterprise software engineering and so running these programs in my home lab requires AD integrations. It’s also needed for HyperV and SCVMM along with things like SQL server auth and GMSA which I can’t get out of testing. Ironically most of my work is in open source/Linux but Windows servers are all over the Enterprise so I don’t have a choice but to run this stuff. No real users on it and just used for the lab.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Keep in mind that AD, Office, and Exchange is he holy trinity of getting hacked in the last years.

    • RedFox
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      Also the cornerstone of enterprise, for better or worse at the moment.

  • conorab@lemmy.conorab.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    9 months ago

    Run at home/lab to learn AD and also gives you a place to test out ideas before pushing to production. You may be able to run a legit AD server with licensing on AWS or similar if they have a free tier.

  • viking
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    9 months ago

    I had it running in a genuine small office environment with 8 employees, who all need to run Windows due to some software constraints.

    Policy management and user account controls are great for security, and remote management via rdp is also neat.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      Plus if you use Samba AD DC you can install it on Debian which will run no issues for years without anything but unattended upgrades.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      Indeed, it makes a lot of sense if you have a lot of desktops/laptops at home or at work. Thanks, and those are great points!

  • computergeek125@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago
    1. Yes I do - MS AD DC

    2. I don’t have a ton of users, but I have a ton of computers. AD keeps them in sync. Plus I can point services like gitea and vCenter at it for even more. Guacamole highly benefits from this arrangement since I can set the password to match the AD password, and all users on all devices subsequently auto-login, even after a password change.

    3. Used to run single domain controller, now I have two (leftover free forever licenses from college). I plan to upgrade them as a tick/tock so I’m not spending a fortune on licensing frequently

    4. With native Windows clients and I believe sssd realmd joins, the default config is to cache the last hash you used to log in. So if you log in regularly to a server it should have an up to date cache should your DC cluster become unavailable. This feature is also used on corporate laptops that need to roam from the building without an always-on VPN. Enterprises will generally also ensure a backup local account is set up (and optionally auto-rotated) in case the domain becomes unavailable in a bad way so that IT can recover your computer.

    5. I used to run in homemade a Free IPA and a MS AD in a cross forest trust when I started ~5-6y ago on the directory stuff. Windows and Mac were joined to AD, Linux was joined to IPA. (I tried to join Mac to IPA but there was only a limited LDAP connector and AD was more painless and less maintenance). One user to rule them all still. IPA has loads of great features - I especially enjoyed setting my shell, sudoers rules, and ssh keys from the directory to be available everywhere instantly.

    But, I had some reliability problems (which may be resolved, I have not followed up) with the update system of IPA at the time, so I ended up burning it down and rejoining all the Linux servers to AD. Since then, the only feature I’ve lost is centralized sudo and ssh keys (shell can be set in AD if you’re clever). sssd handles six key MS group policies using libini, mapping them into relevant PAM policies so you even have some authorization that can be pushed from the DC like in Windows, with some relatively sane defaults.

    I will warn - some MS group policies violate Linux INI spec (especially service definitions and firewall rules) can coredump libini, so you should put your Linux servers in a dedicated OU with their own group policies and limited settings in the default domain policy.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Thanks for the great answer.

      Using AD for SSO in git-frontends and other applications is a fantastic idea. I will probably also run FreeIPA (that’s a name I hadn’t heard in a while till this thread, from another commenter) and have a trust relationship.

      You’re right, this is probably better for learning rather than actually using at home, since most of my computers are linux/BSD, so if I needed a central auth server, I’d probably be better off using something made for *nix.

      With that said, I had a curious idea - can I spin up temporary credentials, using something akin to service/machine accounts, rotate credentials and invalidate credentials freely etc? In essence, I’m wondering if this can be a way to implement a sort of homegrown “AWS STS” alternative, for app secrets, workers and the like. I was initially looking at secret management suites like Vault and Conjur but what if this can do it?

      Also, can AD encrypt the DB? Can FreeIPA do it? I’d like such an option for security.

      Thanks!

      • computergeek125@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        9 months ago

        I don’t have an immediate answer for you on encryption. I know most of the communication is encrypted in flight for AD, and on disk passwords are stored hashed unless the “use reversible encryption field is checked”. There are (in Microsoft terms) gMSAs (group-managed service accounts) but other than using one for ADFS (their oath provider), I have little knowledge of how it actually works on the inside.

        AD also provides encryption key backup services for Bitlocker (MS full-partition encryption for NTFS) and the local account manager I mentioned, LAPS. Recovering those keys requires either a global admin account or specific permission delegation. On disk, I know MS has an encryption provider that works with the TPM, but I don’t have any data about whether that system is used (or where the decryptor is located) for these accounts types with recoverable credentials.

        I did read a story recently about a cyber security firm working with an org who had gotten their way all the way down to domain admin, but needed a biometric unlocked Bitwarden to pop the final backup server to “own” the org. They indicated that there was native windows encryption going on, and managed to break in using a now-patched vulnerability in Bitwarden to recover a decryption key achievable by resetting the domain admin’s password and doing some windows magic. On my DC at home, all I know is it doesn’t need my password to reboot so there’s credentials recovery somewhere.

        Directly to your question about short term use passwords: I’m not sure there’s a way to do it out of the box in MS AD without getting into some overcomplicated process. Accounts themselves can have per-OU password expiration policies that are nanosecond accurate (I know because I once accidentally set a password policy to 365 nanoseconds instead of a year), and you can even set whole account expiry (which would prevent the user from unlocking their expired password with a changed one). Theoretically, you could design/find a system that interacts with your domain to set, impound/encrypt, and manage the account and password expiration of a given set of users, but that would likely be add on software.

  • azl@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    9 months ago

    I do. 4 or 5 users and several computers plus virtual server members. I still use Linux for DNS which works surprisingly well after the initial setup.

    I did it half for practice and half for fun, but having the authentication backend makes it good enough to keep around.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      Could you tell me how you use your own DNS server with AD? I was under the impression that AD wanted to control DNS in the network.

      • azl@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        9 months ago

        There are some SRV and other records which you add for the AD-provided services (kerberos, gc, ldap). This allows your Windows clients to find the domain controllers for authentication via your non-Windows DNS. I think I might have followed a Microsoft or other article when doing the initial setup, but once getting those items in place I haven’t had many issues.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Thanks, I’m considering FreeIPA too. If I run AD, I might run it in a trust relationship with one of these. I will need to look at the extra features that AD gives me over them, of course, otherwise there wouldn’t be a point in running AD at all.

  • Monkey With A Shell@lemmy.socdojo.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    9 months ago

    Not AD proper but a compatible controller Linux distro to tie the desktops to, plus common credentials across several services. Just simplifies things not having a dozen different logins.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Do you mean something like FreeIPA? Seems like a good way to maintain identity across services in the homelab.

      • Monkey With A Shell@lemmy.socdojo.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        No, currently univention corporate server (UCS), but I’ll give those a look since I’ve been eyeing a replacement for a while due to some long standing vulns that I’m keen to be rid of.

    • w2tpmf@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      What is that controller distro you use?

      I used to use a Linux based AD replacement years ago but they turned that one into a pay model and if I’m going to pay for something I’ll just use Windows Server

      • Monkey With A Shell@lemmy.socdojo.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        https://www.univention.com/

        It has all the needed parts plus an interesting plug in app ecosystem if you like that kind of thing. My only real gripe with it though is a pile of high sev vulnerabilities that are picked up by a scanning engine that haven’t been fixed for a long time, so I’m reluctant to recommend it unless you have a solid security/segmentation setup in place.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    Git Popular version control system, primarily for code
    IP Internet Protocol
    Plex Brand of media server package
    SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
    SSO Single Sign-On
    VNC Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access
    VPN Virtual Private Network
    VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

    [Thread #507 for this sub, first seen 13th Feb 2024, 02:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    9 months ago

    It seems cool but it’s just going to be a big headache man. I would just spin up a domain controller and maybe some workstations to play around with.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      I can see that. I will probably do the same before I even think of integrating a DC in my homelab - that goes for both AD and FreeIPA. Thanks