Prerequisites

Before running setup-cm, ensure the following are in place.

Environment

• An isolated, domain-joined lab with a Windows Server host and a separate test client.
• PowerShell 7.0 or later on the server for SetupCm operations.
• PowerShell 7.4 or later on hosts that run the Pester 6 test suite.
• Git for Windows with git.exe on PATH, used to verify the commit embedded in the reviewed source archive before extraction.
• The powershell-yaml module to read the YAML configuration.
• Approved SQL Server, MECM, Windows ADK, Windows PE add-on, ODBC Driver 18, and VC++ x64/x86 media, checksums, and accepted licenses.
• Sufficient local disk space for the configured cache, SQL installation directory, MECM installation directory, and evidence.

Install dependencies locally

Run these test-dependency commands from PowerShell 7.4 or later. Pester 6 also supports Windows PowerShell 5.1, but this repository’s module requires PowerShell 7.

Install-Module Pester -RequiredVersion 6.0.0 -Scope CurrentUser
Install-Module powershell-yaml -RequiredVersion 0.4.12 -Scope CurrentUser

Media and licensing

MECM, SQL Server, and related installers can be licensed, authenticated, customer-specific, large, or subject to vendor distribution rules. The repository stores only source metadata, integrity values, versions, and an explicit license acknowledgement. Operators keep actual media in an approved vendor location, private installer vault, or local cache.

The same separation applies to product keys, credentials, certificates, and generated evidence that may contain environment-specific information.

Safety guardrail

Set safety.isolatedLab: true for the intended use case. If it is false, safety.allowProductionTarget must be explicitly true or configuration validation stops the run. That explicit acknowledgement is a guardrail, not approval to use this project for production deployment.