Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By : Dishan Francis
Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By: Dishan Francis

Overview of this book

Active Directory is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables interoperation with other directories. If you are aware of Active Directory basics and want to gain expertise in it, this book is perfect for you. We will quickly go through the architecture and fundamentals of Active Directory and then dive deep into the core components, such as forests, domains, sites, trust relationships, OU, objects, attributes, DNS, and replication. We will then move on to AD schemas, global catalogs, LDAP, RODC, RMS, certificate authorities, group policies, and security best practices, which will help you gain a better understanding of objects and components and how they can be used effectively. We will also cover AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016 and all their new features. Last but not least, you will learn how to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid-cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations on, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure, effective manner. Furthermore, I will guide you through automating administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. Toward the end of the book, we will cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques that can be used to improve security and performance in an identity infrastructure.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

Setting up PKI

Now, we have finished the theory part of this chapter and are moving on to the deployment part. In this section, I am going to demonstrate how we can set up a PKI using the two-tier model. I have used this model as it is the most commonly user model for mid and large organizations:

The preceding diagram explains the setup I am going to do. In there I have one domain controller, one stand-alone root CA, and one issuing CA. All are running with Windows Server 2016 with the latest patch level.

Setting up a stand-alone root CA

The first step is to set up the stand-alone root CA. This is not a domain member server, and it is operating in the workgroup level. By configuring it on separate VLAN will add additional...