Book Image

Mastering Active Directory. - Second Edition

By : Dishan Francis
Book Image

Mastering Active Directory. - Second Edition

By: Dishan Francis

Overview of this book

Active Directory (AD) is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables inter-operation with other directories. This book will first help you brush up on the AD architecture and fundamentals, before guiding you through core components, such as sites, trust relationships, objects, and attributes. You will then explore AD schemas, LDAP, RMS, and security best practices to understand objects and components and how they can be used effectively. Next, the book will provide extensive coverage of AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016, and help you explore their new features. Furthermore, you will learn to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure and effective manner. You’ll later discover Azure AD Module, and learn to automate administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. All along, this updated second edition will cover content based on the latest version of Active Directory, PowerShell 5.1 and LDAP. By the end of this book, you’ll be well versed with best practices and troubleshooting techniques for improving security and performance in identity infrastructures.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Active Directory Planning, Design, and Installation
8
Section 2: Active Directory Administration
13
Section 3: Active Directory Service Management
18
Section 4: Best Practices and Troubleshooting

Active Directory Services

In this chapter, we are moving into the third part of this book, which focuses on the Active Directory (AD) server roles. There are five main Active Directory server roles:

  • Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
  • Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)
  • Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS)
  • Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)

We have already looked into many AD components, features, and capabilities, but we are not quite done yet. AD services are attached to many different components, such as Domain Name System (DNS), Distributed File System (DFS) replication, and group policies. To maintain a healthy AD environment, we need to manage each of these components properly and make sure they do what they are supposed to do. However, in some scenarios, IT professionals...