Adding machines to a lab ranges from extremely easy to fairly complicated. Both is achieved with one cmdlet though, Add-LabMachineDefinition.

# Add the root domain controller for the domain contoso.com
# Network, memory, ... will all be handled automatically
Add-LabMachineDefinition -Name DC1 -Roles RootDC -OperatingSystem 'Windows Server 2019 Datacenter' -Domain contoso.com

When you are using the automatic machine definitions, the memory requirements will be calculated based on the machines' roles.

If the normal operating system and version combinations are not sufficient on Hyper-V, you can also find your OS and pass the entire object instead of the OS name. This takes care of oddities such as 32bit Windows versions that unfortunately have the same name as their normal 64bit kin.

$x86os = (Get-LabAvailableOperatingSystem -UseOnlyCache | Where {$_.OperatingSystemName -eq 'Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC' -and $_.Architecture -eq 'x86'})
$x64os = (Get-LabAvailableOperatingSystem -UseOnlyCache | Where {$_.OperatingSystemName -eq 'Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC' -and $_.Architecture -eq 'x64'})
Add-LabMachineDefinition -Name test64 -OperatingSystem $x64os
Add-LabMachineDefinition -Name test32 -OperatingSystem $x86os

Install-Lab

Deploying a lab with Linux VMs

With AutomatedLab Linux VMs can be deployed just as easily as Windows VMs. The current implementation should take care of the following distributions: - RHEL 7+ () - CentOS 7+ - Fedora 27+ - SLES 12.3+ () - OpenSuSE

At the moment the machines do not support any of AutomatedLab's roles since our roles are Windows-based. However, your VMs should come up domain-joined and capable of receiving WinRM or SSH requests. AutomatedLab uses kickstart (RHEL-based) or AutoYAST (SLES-based) to configure everything that would be configured in the unattend file of a Windows machine.

WinRM support is spotty with distributions like OpenSuSE and Fedora. Fedora being too cutting-edge does not allow PowerShell and omi-psrp-server to be installed, while OpenSuSE currently has the wrong package dependencies and fails installing PowerShell as well.

To address this issue, please use the parameters SshPublicKeyPath and SshPrivateKeyPath when deploying Linux hosts.

Simple Linux lab

You can find the Linux lab here: AL Loves Linux As you can see, integrating Linux clients is very simple in general: 

Add-LabMachineDefinition -Name LINCN2 -OperatingSystem 'CentOS 7.4'

If you want to add additional package groups to be installed during setup, you can do so by specifying them: 

Add-LabMachineDefinition -RhelPackage domain-client -Name LINCN1 -OperatingSystem 'CentOS 7.4' -DomainName contoso.com

You can find all available packages with Get-LabAvailableOperatingSystem | Select-Object -Expand LinuxPackageGroup. However, the basics should be fine for most cases.
At them moment, your Linux-based labs need an internet connection (i.e. a routing VM) so that the PowerShell and omi-psrp-server can be downloaded during setup. Without omid running on the Linux machines, your lab will run into a timeout during installation. While this will not break things, it will certainly cause a long wait.

Azure-specific properties

There are several properties that can be used with the AzureProperties parameter of the Add-LabMachineDefinition cmdlet.

  • ResourceGroupName - Resource group this machine is deployed into, if it should be different
  • UseAllRoleSizes - Use a random role size of the available role sizes
  • RoleSize - Use specific role size like Standard_D2_v2
  • LoadBalancerRdpPort - Use a different port for the inbound NAT rule. Needs to be unique in your lab!
  • LoadBalancerWinRmHttpPort - Use a different port for the inbound NAT rule. Needs to be unique in your lab!
  • LoadBalancerWinRmHttpsPort - Use a different port for the inbound NAT rule. Needs to be unique in your lab!
  • LoadBalancerAllowedIp - A comma-separated string (NOT an array) containing IP addresses allowed to connect, e.g. "$(Get-PublicIpAddress), 1.2.3.4"
  • SubnetName - The subnet name this machine is deployed into
  • UseByolImage - Boolean as string indicating that BYOL licensing is used
  • AutoshutdownTime - The timespan as string when the machines shut be shut down
  • AutoshutdownTimezoneId - The time zone ID as string for the auto shutdown time
  • StorageSku - The storage SKU for additional disks. OS disks are managed disks. Either 'Standard_LRS', 'Premium_LRS' or 'StandardSSD_LRS'