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

What is DNS?

In mobile phones, we have phone books. If we need to save someone's phone number, how we do that? Do we just enter the number and save it? No. We attach the number to a person's name or something we can remember, so the next time we open the contact list, we can easily find it. The same applies when you are dealing with IP addresses. I remember a few of the most commonly used IP addresses in my clients' infrastructure, but I do not remember most others. I remember lots of servers by their hostnames rather than their IP addresses. This is because hostnames are more user friendly and are easier to remember than IP addresses. This is exactly what DNS does: it maps IP addresses to domain names or common terms that are user friendly.

As I stated, there can be no functioning AD domain infrastructure without DNS. There are two main reasons why AD DS needs...