---
title: "Zentyal – my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife"
date: "2018-10-10T17:34:44Z"
tags: ["Active Directory", "DNS", "Home Lab"]
categories: ["Blog & Other", "VMware"]
---

<img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-logo.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - logo"/>

I recently had to rebuild homelab due to the SSD disk failure. I had backups but the initial setup wasn't optimal. I decided to rebuild it from scratch. 

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As I am using PowerCLI script from William Lam <a href="https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-vsphere-automated-lab-deployment" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-vsphere-automated-lab-deployment</a> one of the prerequisites to successful lab deployment is working DNS. As I don't want to use Windows Server Active Directory I used Zentyal Server. Besides Directory & Domain Server has many more features: mail server, gateway (routing, gateway, firewall, proxy, ids/ips), and infrastructure server (dhcp, ntp, ca, ftp).

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If you want to know all features simply visit the webpage <a href="http://www.zentyal.com/zentyal-server/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.zentyal.com/zentyal-server/</a>.

Zentyal is based on Ubuntu Server and has a very nice management panel via a browser.

# Zentyal Server installation

The installation is quite simple but let's go with the steps.

  1. On ESXi, click **Create / Register VM** and select **Create a new virtual machine.**
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-1.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 1"/>
  2. Provide a virtual machine name, choose compatibility, guest os family and guest os version.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-2.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 2"/>
  3. Select the Datastore.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-3.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 3"/>
  4. As per installation wiki, we will provide 1vCPU and 2GB RAM and 80GB disk.
  5. Click OK.
  6. We need to mount Zentyal ISO - it is a pity that they don't provide OVA/OVF for easy deployments.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-4.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 4"/>
  7. Power the virtual machine.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-21.webp"/>
  8. As the virtual machine is powered on we can proceed with Zentyal Server installation. Choose the desired language.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-5.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 5"/>
  9. Select your location.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-6.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 6"/>
 10.  Choose default locale.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-7.webp"/>
 11. We can skip the keyboard layout detection.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-8.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 8"/>
 12. Choose your desired keyboard layout.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-9.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 9"/>
 13. In my case, I am in an isolated network and there isn't a DHCP server. We must provide static IP.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-22.webp"/>
 14. We must enter the static IP configuration.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-23.webp"/>
 15. First IP address.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-24.webp"/>
 16. Then the netmask.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-25.webp"/>
 17. The gateway.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-26.webp"/>
 18. Finally the name server address.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-27.webp"/>
 19. We need to choose a hostname and enter it into the wizard.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-29.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 29"/>
 20. The last step from the networking part will be the domain name.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-30.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 30"/>
 21. In the next step, we have to create a username.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-11.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 11"/>
 22. Choose a password and confirm it again.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-12.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 12"/>
 23. Confirm detected timezone.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-13.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 13"/>
 24. Zentyal will be installed on the disk.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-14.webp"/>
 25. After a few minutes installation will be completed.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-15.webp"/>

# Zentyal Server configuration

For my homelab, I need the following services: Active Directory and DNS. We will configure those two services in this section.

## Zentyal Server Packages Installation

After the installation, we must install the desired services/packages.

  1. Login to the web interface using previously entered username and password.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-16.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 16"/>
  2. Click continue. We must select the services we want to install.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-17.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 17"/>
  3. Click install. On the next screen, we will see the summary of selected services.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/04/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-18.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 18"/>
  4. Once the packages are installed we are being asked about Active Directory configuration. We need to provide Host domain name.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-31.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 31"/>

## Zentyal Server Active Directory

  1. In order to fully enable Active Directory, we must enable the module.
  2. Go to Module Status section and enable **Domain Controller and File Sharing**. Please note that it depends on Network, DNS and NTP modules.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-32.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 32"/>
  3. The most important part is to click **Save Changes **in the upper right corner.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-33.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 33"/>
  4. Confirm changes.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-34.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 34"/>

## Zentyal Server DNS

  1. In my case, I will use DNS to host internal homelab DNS entries. In order to add DNS entries go to DNS.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-35.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 35"/>
  2. Click **Hostnames** and **Add new**.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-36.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 36"/>
  3. Next step is to add IP addresses to DNS entries. Click gearbox on desired DNS entry.
    <img src="/images/uploads/2018/10/zentyal-my-new-homelab-swiss-army-knife-37.webp" alt="Zentyal - my new Homelab Swiss Army Knife - 37"/>
  4. The most important part is to Save Changes in the upper right corner.

# Summary

Zentyal is the perfect solution for a Homelab where you want to have open source DNS, Active Directory and many more services. I use it every day and I am really happy.

## Zentyal documentation

Installation wiki<a href="https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/En/5.0/Installation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/En/5.0/Installation </a>