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 5: Managing Active Directory Sites and Troubleshooting Replication

When I first learned about Active Directory sites, the concept was explained to me as being locations of readily available connectivity.

There's an easy analogy for it: islands. In island states, people live on islands, but not everything they need might be available on their island. Additionally, something on their island might break, and there are only a few trade routes for goods and services.

In this analogy, the trade routes between geographical locations are the networking connections between Active Directory sites, the islands of readily available connectivity. The island's roads are that readily available connectivity: you can use them all you want, without additional cost.

Not many organizations place the domain controllers that hold Flexible Single Master Operation (FSMO) roles in poorly connected Active Directory sites. Many networking topologies for organizations feature a hub...