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)

FSMO roles placement

The first domain controller in the first Active Directory forest will hold all five FSMO roles. All these roles are critical in the Active Directory infrastructure. Some of them are heavily used and some roles are only used only on specific occasions. Some role owners will not be able to afford any downtime, and some roles will still be able to have downtime. So, based on characteristics, impact, and responsibilities, these can be placed on different domain controllers. FSMO roles placements are based on certain facts that are listed in the next section.

Active Directory logical and physical topology

If it's a single forest-single domain environment, it is not hard to keep all the FSMO roles in one...