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

Finding objects in AD

AD holds different types of objects in its database. The most common way to locate an object in AD is to use ADAC or ADUC and browse through the containers. As the number of objects increases, so does the difficulty of locating objects in AD. In this section, we are going to look into more efficient ways of locating objects in an AD environment.

ADAC has enhanced query and filter capabilities. Since it's used via a GUI, it helps us to retrieve results faster compared to PowerShell.

In its management list, there is a filter box in the top section (once you click on the domain name in the navigation pane). It doesn't change the view as you navigate through the containers. It helps you to filter the data displayed in the management list quickly. However, it doesn't search for objects at multiple levels (child containers):

ADAC has a feature called...