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)

Implementing LAPS

Microsoft's free LAPS allows admins to periodically change the password for the local administrator password on domain-joined devices. This recipe shows how to implement and use it.

Getting ready

First, download LAPS from http://aka.ms/LAPS. Download the *.msi file that corresponds to the client operating system architecture(s) used in the organization. Most likely, this will be x64. Place the file on a share.

Ensure that all domain controllers in the environment run Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or a newer version of Windows Server.

If your organization places devices in the default Computers container, move the computer objects that you want to be part of LAPS from this container to an OU dedicated to devices.

How to do it...

There are two sides to LAPS – implementing it and managing it.

Implementing LAPS

Implementing LAPS requires four steps:

Extending the schema

Perform these steps to extend the Active Directory...