Enterprise-Network-Lab-Simulation

Skip to how-it-works.md to read how the whole setup works.

This simulation project was inspired by a few questions I had 🤔 and decided to find the answers by setting up my own lab environment:

• How do Linux systems integrate with Active Directory?
• How do enterprise environments route and control client traffic?
• How can software be batch-installed across multiple Windows clients?

So here is the GitHub documentation about my learning and how it went.

Lab Setup

Everything was built using VMware Workstation on a custom virtual network (10.109.25.0/24), routed through pfSense.

Machine	IP Address	Role
pfSense	10.109.25.1	Firewall, DHCP, gateway
Windows Server	10.109.25.100	Active Directory + DNS server
Windows 11	10.109.25.110	Domain-joined client
Ubuntu Client	10.109.25.111	Domain-joined Linux client

All machines are on the same subnet and receive their IPs through static DHCP reservations via MAC address mapping in pfSense.

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While I was working on this lab there a few errors I ran into and I am documenting that as well for anyone and myself to help troubleshooting in the future.

✅ What’s Working

• 🔧 pfSense is handling routing between LAN and WAN(Internet)
• 📡 Static DHCP mappings based on MAC addresses
• 🏢 Active Directory and DNS services running on Windows Server
• 🖥️ Both Windows and Ubuntu clients successfully joined to the domain
• 🌐 Internet access is working on all machines
• 🧠 Windows Server DNS forwards external queries to 8.8.8.8(To resolve DNS requests not solvable by the Windows Server)

❌ What Didn’t Work (Troubleshooting Highlights)

See what-went-wrong.md for more details, but here are a few key issues I ran into:

• Win11 wasn’t getting the right IP because it was set to static instead of DHCP
• Extra network adapters (from VMware NAT) were causing routing issues
• Windows Server couldn’t reach the internet — its DNS pointed to pfSense instead of itself
• DNS forwarding wasn’t configured initially on the server, so domain lookups failed

All of these helped me learn and sharpen my troubleshooting skills using tools like ping, ipconfig, tracert, and nslookup.

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Directory Guide

📁 architecture/     → Network diagram and VM configuration notes
📁 configs/          → pfSense and Windows Server DNS settings
📁 troubleshooting/  → Fix logs for specific issues
📁 screenshots/      → Visual references from the l