Active Directory an Overview
Active
Directory is a database or centralize repository of users and groups, services
(Emails etc), and resources (Printers etc). All users and groups, services, and
resources in AD known as Objects and collection of these objects is known as
Active Directory.
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) provide authentication
in our network means to provide a centralized authentication service for Microsoft networks such as when
any client in AD environment in an organization try to login then it sends a
request to server (Known as Login request).
Then server verifies that the
user name and password entered by the user is matching to the user name and
password present in AD database and if this user name and password matches with
the AD database then the server gives the rights and permissions to the client
and let it know that which resources (that are allocated particularly him) he
can use.
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Active Directory Benefits
Basically it was introduced
in 2000 and in 2003 and 2008 lots of improvements were made in it. Before 2008
it was known as only Active Directory but in 2008 a new name was given Active
Directory Domain Services (AD DS).
One of the big benefits is that its
structure is hierarchical means well defined, the second benefit is Multi-Master
Authentication and Multi-Master Replication which means that the administrator
have the ability to access and modify to AD DS from multiple points of
administration.
Third benefit is, it is a single point of access to network
resources means if you have a print server, file server or mail server in your
network then you do not need to login on each server while you have a single
point of access because active directory manages all these things which is a
collection of users and groups, services (DHCP, DNS, Print services, file
services, etc), and resources (Printers etc).
The next benefit is, ADDS has the
ability to create a trust relationship with external networks running previous
versions of Active Directory means
suppose your organization's network and external organization network wish to
communicate with each other and want to develop a trust relationship with each
other, then Microsoft Windows server 2008 has the ability to make various types
of relationships such as with Microsoft-Microsoft and Microsoft to other (Unix
etc).
In Hierarchical
structure in which structure is divided into forest, tree, domain, and organizational
units (O0Us). Forest is the biggest container object in which we can keep the
other types of objects and in domains, we can make the OUs for better
organization and users groups and computers are kept in these organizational
units and various types of permissions and policies are implemented upon then.
In Multi-Master
Authentication and Multi-Master
Replication means your database is located on multiple locations so a single point of failure is never happen
and you can access or change the database wherever you want.
When you make
changes on one server then the data will replicate automatically to the other
locations (Suppose you have one AD server with 2 on backup) same when users
sends a login request to first AD DS and suppose server does not respond then
it can be logon from 2nd 3rd AD DS because all servers
have the same database and users do not face the single point of failure and the
administrator can perform management tasks from any nearest server.
In single point of
access benefit, you do not need to know that which one is your File or Print
server or where located the other services like DNS or DHCP because all these
things are maintained by AD DS and the only this that the user needs to be done
is just logon to a domain controller on which this AD is installed which searches
the resources for you and also authorize you on which resources you have
given access.
The trusts that AD
creates is of various types such as
Parent-Child
Trust (Transitive Trust, Two way)
Tree
Root Trust (Transitive Trust, Two way)
Shortcut
Trust (Non-Transitive Trust, One way)
External
Trust (Non-Transitive Trust, One way)- Among two different organizations
Cross
Forest Trust (Transitive, Two way)
Realm
Trust (Non-Transitive Trust, One way) -Among Microsoft and Unix.
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