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)

Hierarchical naming structure

In Chapter 1, Active Directory Fundamentals, we looked into domain trees and explored how domain trees can be used to organize the domain structure in the hierarchical method. DNS allows you to translate that logical structure into the domain namespace. Similar to a tree, it starts from the root and is spread into different layers, such as branches and leaves. In the domain tree, the root is represented by a dot (.). The actual tree branch contains many leaves. In the domain tree, a branch represents a collection of named resources. A leaf in a branch represents a single named entry. In a tree, branch and leaves depend on each other. Branches or leaves are part of one system until everything is attached together. When we describe a leaf or a branch, we explain it with the tree. For example, if I need to show someone a leaf of an apple tree, I explained...