What you need for this book

All of the technologies and features that are discussed in the recipes of this book are included with Windows Server 2012 R2. As long as you have access to the operating system installer disc and a piece of hardware on which you can install it, you will be able to follow along with our lessons. In fact, if you are brand new to the Microsoft world and are not sure how to acquire the Windows Server 2012 R2 installation media, you can download an evaluation copy of it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2

Many of the tasks that we are going to accomplish together require a certain amount of base networking and infrastructure to be configured, in order to fully test the technologies that we are working with. If you have access to a Hyper-V server on which you can build multiple virtual machines running Windows Server 2012 R2, you will be able to build recipe upon recipe as we move through setting up the core infrastructure tasks; you can then utilize those servers that we have configured in order to build up later recipes. Building out a lab network that includes core Microsoft roles such as Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, certificates, and web and file servers will help you tremendously as you move through this book. And if you are not familiar with building out that lab, never fear. Many of the recipes contained within will help you to structure out the lab itself.