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)

Designing the OU structure

In Active Directory, there are different types of objects, such as user accounts, groups, and devices. It is important to manage them effectively. Organizational units can group objects that have similar administrative and security requirements within the domain. Organizational units are used to delegate the administration of objects and apply group policies.

OU design changes are less complex compared to domain- and forest-level structure changes. As OUs are bound to group policies, when you change the structure, you need to make sure the correct group policies are still applied. When you move objects from one OU to another, object will inherit the security settings and group polices that are applied to the destination OU. It will not move any settings it has in the source OU level.

The forest owner can delegate permission to users to become OU administrators...