Book Image

Active Directory Administration Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Sander Berkouwer
Book Image

Active Directory Administration Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Sander Berkouwer

Overview of this book

Updated to the Windows Server 2022, this second edition covers effective recipes for Active Directory administration that will help you leverage AD's capabilities for automating network, security, and access management tasks in the Windows infrastructure. Starting with a detailed focus on forests, domains, trusts, schemas, and partitions, this book will help you manage domain controllers, organizational units, and default containers. You'll then explore Active Directory sites management as well as identify and solve replication problems. As you progress, you'll work through recipes that show you how to manage your AD domains as well as user and group objects and computer accounts, expiring group memberships, and Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs) with PowerShell. Once you've covered DNS and certificates, you'll work with Group Policy and then focus on federation and security before advancing to Azure Active Directory and how to integrate on-premise Active Directory with Azure AD. Finally, you'll discover how Microsoft Azure AD Connect synchronization works and how to harden Azure AD. By the end of this AD book, you’ll be able to make the most of Active Directory and Azure AD Connect.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

Chapter 1: Optimizing Forests, Domains, and Trusts

Back in the year 2000, when Active Directory was introduced to the larger public, we lived in a different world. The internet was only just starting to deliver value to businesses. That's why, in Windows 2000 Server, Active Directory was largely disconnected from the internet. Windows 2000 Server's default Domain Name System (DNS) settings even came with a root domain; so, if you wanted to connect to the internet, you had to delete the. DNS zone manually.

Fast forward to today, and the internet and cloud services seem omnipresent. The default . DNS zone has disappeared from Windows Server, but the concepts of trees and forests in Active Directory has persisted, and they still allow for some confusion among Active Directory admins.

To explain domains, trees, and forests in Active Directory, we need to acknowledge Active Directory's past. To create anything in Active Directory, you'll need to create a domain...