Windows 10 Client

Having a DC fulfills our requirements for being able to use Group Policy, but for practical purposes, we also need a system that we can throw settings at to make sure that our policies are doing what we want them to do. For this, I am installing Windows 10 Enterprise onto a client computer that will be plugged into the same network as our Windows Server 2016 Domain Controller.

If you have the resources available, you could also spin up some additional DCs and join them together to increase the resiliency of your domain, and you could also create some additional testing devices. Perhaps you want to test some settings on Windows 10, but you also have some Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients in your network. Or maybe you have a bunch of Windows Server 2012 R2 servers and you want to test applying settings to those servers from Group Policy. Create as many client or server systems as you want to test with, plug them into the same network, and take the same procedures on those devices that we will be taking on our Windows 10 client in order to increase your testing capabilities.