Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By : Dishan Francis
Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By: Dishan Francis

Overview of this book

Active Directory is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables interoperation with other directories. If you are aware of Active Directory basics and want to gain expertise in it, this book is perfect for you. We will quickly go through the architecture and fundamentals of Active Directory and then dive deep into the core components, such as forests, domains, sites, trust relationships, OU, objects, attributes, DNS, and replication. We will then move on to AD schemas, global catalogs, LDAP, RODC, RMS, certificate authorities, group policies, and security best practices, which will help you gain a better understanding of objects and components and how they can be used effectively. We will also cover AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016 and all their new features. Last but not least, you will learn how to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid-cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations on, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure, effective manner. Furthermore, I will guide you through automating administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. Toward the end of the book, we will cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques that can be used to improve security and performance in an identity infrastructure.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

AD DS 2016 features

AD DS improvements apply to its forest and domain functional levels. Upgrading the operating system or adding domain controllers that run Windows Server 2016 to an existing AD infrastructure isn't going to upgrade the forest and domain functional levels. In order to use or test these new AD DS 2016 features, you need to have the forest and domain function levels set to Windows Server 2016. The minimum forest and domain functional levels you can run on your identity infrastructure depend on the lowest domain controller version running.

For example, if you have a Windows Server 2008 domain controller in your infrastructure, even if you add a Windows Server 2016 domain controller, the domain and forest functional levels need to be maintained as Windows Server 2008 until the last Windows Server 2008 domain controller is removed from the infrastructure.

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