Active Directory For Beginners Pdf

Get the most out of this content by easily switching from one chapter to another. Table of contents: Introduction to Active Directory Services Technologies. Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) Evolution of Windows Domain Controller. Best Practices: Deploy and Set Up Domain Controller. SYSVOL Directory. Forests in Active Directory. Jun 01, 2012 User Review and Vote. This book windows active directory tutorial in pdf file is really easy to understand - by George, June 1, 2012 5 / 5 stars Reading this book is easy and simple. The windows active directory tutorial in pdf file very good for beginner. If you are an expert people, you can use this manual as reference.

Step 1: Click with the mouse on Server Manager which is found in the task bar as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2: After opening the “Server Manager”, click on the second option “Add roles and features”. Windows Server 2012 17. Step 3: The following screen will appear, then you can Click on the Next button.
Active Directory and its Components Domain Controll er s On M ic ro so ft Se rv e rs, a domain con trolle r (D C) is a se rv e r th at re spond s to se curity au th en tica tion reque sts (lo gg in g in, ch e ck ing p e rmission s, e tc.) with in the W in dows Se rv e r d oma in.
Active Directory (AD) is a technology created by Microsoft to provide network services including LDAP directory services, Kerberos based authentication, DNS naming, secure access to resources, and more. Active Directory uses a single Jet database which a variety of services and applications can use to access and store a variety of information.
Understanding Active Directory for Beginners – Part 1. Active Directory take care of this by using Kerberos Authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO means ability of Kerberos to provide a user with one set of credentials and grant them access across a range of resources and services with that same set of credentials.

Mar 17, 2015 SCCM (ConfigMgr) engineers and desktop support engineers should have basic idea of Active Directory. Otherwise, it would very difficult for them to troubleshoot on the issue. Veeam is always here to support IT Pros community. In this free eBook about Active Directory under the hood.

What is Directory Service?
Active Directory
History of Directory Service
Advantage of LDAP
Back to Active Directory
Naming conventions
Requirement of DNS
AD objects
AD Database
Schema
Domain, Tree and Forest

A directory service is a container that provides a hierarchical structure and allows to store objects for quick and easy access and manipulation. A directory service is like an electronic phone directory that lets you search for Name and retrieve the phone number, address, or other information without knowing where that person lives.
Before directory services, If you needed a file, you needed to know the name of the file, the name of the server on which it is stored and its folder path. Now this works well on small network, but as the network grows it becomes challenging.
Directory service is the means by which users and administrators can locate resources regardless of where those resources are located.
Also earlier typical user could have more than one user account or password, and as the network grows and the number of username and password also increases, like one for File Server, one for email server, etc.

Active Directory is Microsoft’s answer to directory services and it does a lot more than just locating resources.
Active Directory take care of this by using Kerberos Authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO means ability of Kerberos to provide a user with one set of credentials and grant them access across a range of resources and services with that same set of credentials. Kerberos authenticates the credentials and issues the user a ticket with which the user gains access to the resources and services that support Kerberos.
Active Directory also makes user management more easier as it acts as a single repository for all of this user and computer related information.

Earlier to today’s directory services is X.500 specification that emerged from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), formerly the CCITT (Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique et Télégraphique).
X.500 sits at the Application layer in the OSI model. X.500 contain several component databases that work together as a single entity.
The primary database is the Directory Information Base (DIB), which stores information about the objects. Major limitation was its lack of integration with Internet Protocol (IP).
Protocol it used was Directory Access Protocol, or DAP. DAP offered more functionality than that is required for implementing directory services, so a scaled down version called Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) was made. Later it was considered as a standard by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

LDAP relies on the TCP/IP stack rather than the OSI stack
Integrate with IP and enable IP clients to use LDAP to query directory services.
LDAP can perform hyper-searches. Giving one directory the ability to defer to another to provide requested data.
LDAP’s API is C-based
Like X.500, LDAP uses an inverted-tree hierarchical structure
LDAP supports Kerberos authentication, Simple Authentication Security Layer (SASL), and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) is a framework for authentication and data security in Internet protocols.

AD is Microsoft’s answer to directory services and it does a lot more than just locating resources.
AD uses LDAP as its access protocol.
AD relies on DNS as its locator service, enabling clients to locate domain controllers through DNS queries.
Lets Understand Active Directory in more detail.

AD contains information about objects in your enterprise.
These objects can be computers, users, printers etc.
AD is a container with nested containers holding other containers or objects.
And we name these container and objects so that its easy to query or search.

User Principal Names, or UPN
LDAP names also known as Distinguished Name

This one you’ll probably find most familiar, is as per RFC 822 specification.
This has the same format as your email address: Like ashwin@road2master.ms
They take the form user@domain
If you have a user named User01 under Active Directory domain Domain01.local, the UPN will be User01@Domain01.Local
We will discuss more about AD domain later.
In AD you can create custom UPNs too, which means you can also add User01@Domain01.com or User01@xyz.com as UPN for above mentioned object.
More on these later.

Typically it has this format

Active Directory Domain Services

cn=common name

ou=organizational unit

dc=domain

for eg. cn=Ashwin,ou=Trainer,dc=Road2Master,dc=ms

And query should look like this for the

LDAP://R2MAD01.road2master.ms/cn=Ashwin,ou=Trainer,dc=Road2Master,dc=ms

R2MAD01.road2master.ms is the FQDN of the Domain Controller.

DNS Server must support
Service resource (SRV) records
Dynamic update protocol specified by RFC 2136
AD relies on DNS as its primary locator service, although its not the only mechanism for locating domain controllers (DCs).
Domain Controller is the server which has Active Directory Installed.
When a Domain Controller starts,
It registers both its DNS name and NetBIOS name. More on NetBIOS name later.
It add LDAP-specific SRV records in DNS to enable LDAP clients to locate DCs through LDAP queries.
It also add Kerberos authentication protocol-specific SRV records to enable clients to locate servers running the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) service.
Also each DC also adds an A record that enables clients that don’t support SRV records to locate the DC through a simple host record lookup. You can disable this if required.

Objects in AD can be either containers for other objects or they can be leaf objects, which do not serve as containers.
Objects in AD have attributes, and these attributes not only define the object but also store data. This defines the character of that Object.
Some attributes and optional and some are mandatory.
Optional : Phone Number
Mandatory: Username
When an Object is created AD assigns a GUID, which is a 128-bit number and no two objects in AD have the same GUID.
And If an object is moved from AD, it doesn't delete its GUID.
Objects in AD are protected by Access Control Lists (ACLs).
More on Security later.

The ESE comprises of tables that define the structure of the directory.
The Database Layer has three partition that define the contents of AD with an optional 4th table or partition.

This stores Active Directory Schema.
Active Directory Schema defines what are the types of objects that can be created in the directory
How are those objects relate to one another, and what are the mandatory and optional attributes of each object.
And how can one create such objects.

Active Directory Basics For Beginners Pdf

This contains configuration of AD.

This partition stores the objects.

Understanding Active Directory For Beginners

This is an optional 4th partition that an administrator can create.
More on this later.

More about Active Database in the upcomming parts.

Active Directory Schema defines what are the types of objects that can be created in the directory
How are those objects relate to one another, and what are the mandatory and optional attributes of each object.
And how can one create such objects.
Schema requires to updates whenever you need to create a new type of object or add anything that requires new attribute.

Objects that are made on AD are grouped into domains.
The objects for a single domain are stored in a single database (which can be replicated).

A tree is a collection of one or more domains

A forest is a collection of trees that share a common global catalog, directory schema, logical structure, and directory configuration.

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