By John Hopkins | HopTechOne.com | October 2025

With a background in Fresenius IT support and a passion for getting devices securely connected and talking with each other, I decided to build a hands-on lab to sharpen my endpoint management skills. This blog chronicles my TestVM project—setting up a Microsoft 365 Business Premium Pro tenant and domain (HopTechOne.com) on multiple BYOD and domain joined devices, troubleshooting Intune policies, Entra ID joins, and domain setup. It’s NOT all cost-free! I’m sinking real money into this training. The acquired skills align with emerging 2025 job trends: 65% of IT support roles need endpoint management (Robert Half), and 50% of PACS/FSE roles require IAM (Zippia).

What started as a simple Azure / Entra ID join turned into a deep dive into DNS, Webpage creation, registry tweaks, and policy scoping. Here’s the story, lessons learned, and next steps—perfect for anyone prepping for AZ-900 or AZ-104 or any other Sr level IT support roles.