...1. Benefits of directory services (AD DS) Without getting too technical and wordy, but being able to help the client understand more about what active directory does, the following can be explained: - AD shows a better representation of the network by a process known as centralization. Centralization is the process of managing users regardless of the size of the network in one location. - Utilizes organizational units to improve scalability. If an organization is large, OUs can help simplify the task by grouping resources (such as users and computers) that have similar rights. - Replication makes it easier because any changes that are made are replicated to other domain controllers so that the network can run more efficiently. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-benefits-of-moving-clients-to-an-active-directory-environment/ Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) benefits: Redundancy Fault Tolerance Serves as a domain controller that authenticates users when logging on to a network. Participates in storing, modifying, and maintaining the AD database (Textbook) Page 3 for major benefits of AD DS Mark is concerned about ensuring the network so that it has little to no downtime at all. AD DS can help ease this issue because of the system providing fault tolerance. It continues to provide services even if 1 or more servers experience hardware failure or loss of connectivity. How does it do this? It does this through its multimaster...
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...What is an Active Directory (AD) used for? Active Directory (AD) is used for maintaining a network in an efficient and productive manner. It works similar to a phone book in that it is a list of all the networked devices and information about each in an easily searchable format that allow network administrators to perform their jobs correctly. What are a domain, forest, and namespace? Domain – The logical directory components created to manage an organization; acts as a container for organizational units. Forest – The top-level container within the active directory environment; acts as a collection of domain controllers within an organization Namespace – Defines the scope of the AD and then breaks off into a forest of names. For example, a namespace could be Google.com with branches going to Maps.Google.com and Mail.Google.com. Why are contiguous namespaces important when designing a domain structure or model? A contiguous namespace is important when designing a domain structure or model because it helps to define the exact structure of how everything is laid out. It would be very difficult to confuse the namespace of MapQuest with Maps.Google.com. You can clearly tell that one belongs to namespace MapQuest and one to Google. Without simple organization, there would be chaos. What are some business considerations or requirements considered in the domain structure planning process? Some important business considerations or requirements considered in the domain structure...
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...more stringently than others, such as schema management and adding or removing additional domains from an AD forest. These specified roles are called Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO). This means only one DC in the replica ring can provide a particular operation. To find which roles a DC currently hold you can use the ntdsutil. From the start menu, key roles and press enter, key connections press enter, key connect to server and server name and domain press enter, key quit and press enter, key select operation target press enter, key list roles for connected server and press enter and quit. There are other ways to find which roles a DC currently holds, such as: * You must know the default settings. By default the first domain controller installed in the forest root domain is designated as a global catalog server. * Schema snap-in * AD Domains and Trusts snap-in * And for RID, PDC emulator and Infrastructure use AD users and configuration snap-in. You will need to develop a plan in the event that a role holder fails. Here are some suggestions. * The Primary Domain Controller (PDC) and the Relative Identifier Master (RID) should be on the same DC if possible. The PDC role is mostly used of all FSMO roles and has the widest range of functions. * The Schema Master and Domain Naming Master should be on the...
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...to decide on your own which tools you prefer to work with, although I can ease the pain of the decision by providing insight on each of the tools you have at your fingertips. DCDIAG – is a command line tool that analyzes the state of domain controllers in a forest and shows any problems to help with trouble shooting. There are many useful commands with this tool, much too many to include in this simple letter, but there are plenty of locations on line that provide the commands with descriptions for use. NTDSUTIL – is another command line tool that manages facilities for Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and the lightweight version (AD LDS). This tool can be used for database maintenance of AD DS, control and manage single master operations, and remove metadata left by domain controllers that had been improperly uninstalled. This tool has many commands that would cause this letter to become undesirably long so Google is your best bet to find them with descriptions. MMC Snap-ins – is a graphical interface that hosts administrative tools for managing your networks, special tools can be created here for administrative tasks. It basically allows you to build your own tools with the standard user interface. This tool will probably be your best bet to begin with, but don’t shy from the other two. Plans for failure of a role holder - Some roles are needed for AD functioning, while other can be gone for a while before being noticed. Usually it’s not the failure...
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...Week 4 – Active Directory Design Scenario Since the two new braches office will be directly connected to main office you can configure hub and spoke topology. I would also recommend in hub site to have minimum two DC for redundancy. In the event of failure if second DC does not exist irrespective of OS version AD replication will be down totally. At least in the hub site you should have additional DC if not present. Branch 1 – For this site I would recommend setting up another line to the main hub to remove single point of failure. Also setting a backup for branch 1 located at main site and if possible at branch 2. A two way trust will need to be set up to support backup at main site/branch 2 if servers fail at branch 1. To support AD replication I would use two way trust network. Branch 2 – With branch 2 being located at a remote site I would recommend setting a VSAT system to remove the single point of failure. With the slow speed at this branch it would not make for a very good backup site. I would use two way trusts for replication of services. *Recommendations for Optimum Performance For Active Directory replication, a rule of thumb is that a given domain controller that acts as a bridgehead server should not have more than 50 active simultaneous replication connections at any given time in a replication window. (This was determined on a reference server that had four Pentium III Xeon processors with 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM and 2 megabytes (MB) of L2 cache.) Adjusting...
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...would ask. I would need to know how many users will be on the network. I would need to know who needs to go where and what groups they need to be put in. I would need to determine how many forests they need and what domains fall under each forest. Once I determined the right amount of clients and how many forests I need I can then begin setting up the network. For each of the FSMO roles I would need to make sure they got put in a place where they would be most useful. The schema Master would be placed in the forest so it can be available to all qualified personnel to make changes. The Domain Naming Master would also be on the forest. The PDC emulator, the RID Master and the Infrastructure Master would all be placed on the Domain. The PDC emulator needs to be on the Domain for all the domain controllers could access the server for time synchronization. The RID Master needs to be accessible for domain controllers requesting identifiers for the pools to have access. The Infrastructure Master would be placed on a different domain controller than the global catalog so it can function properly. I would place the global catalog on a server by itself so it can have the whole hard drive space to store the information. An estimated 50 percent of the size of the ntds.dit file of every other domain in the forest should be...
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...updates can be made by any writeable DC. Some sensitive operations need to be controlled more stringently than others, such as schema management and adding or removing additional domains from an AD forest. These specified roles are called Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO). This means only one DC in the replica ring can provide a particular operation. To find which roles a DC currently hold you can use the ntdsutil. From the start menu, key roles and press enter, key connections press enter, key connect to server and server name and domain press enter, key quit and press enter, key select operation target press enter, key list roles for connected server and press enter and quit. There are other ways to find which roles a DC currently holds, such as: * You must know the default settings. By default the first domain controller installed in the forest root domain is designated as a global catalog server. * Schema snap-in * AD Domains and Trusts snap-in * And for RID, PDC emulator and Infrastructure use AD users and configuration snap-in. You will need to develop a plan in the event that a role holder fails. Here are some suggestions. * The Primary Domain Controller (PDC) and the Relative Identifier Master (RID) should be on the same DC if possible. The PDC role is mostly used of all FSMO roles and has the widest range of...
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...domain? 3. What servers/server are global catalog servers? 4. How many computers will be hosting the FSMO roles? 5. Will the roles be on one DC or multiple? The Schema Master and Domain Naming Master should reside on the same server, and that machine should be a Global Catalog server. Since all three are, by default, on the first domain controller installed in a forest, then you can leave them as they are. The Infrastructure Master should not be on the same server that acts as a Global Catalog server. The reason for this is the Global Catalog contains information about every object in the forest. When the Infrastructure Master, which is responsible for updating Active Directory information about cross domain object changes, needs information about objects not in its domain, it contacts the Global Catalog server for this information. If they both reside on the same server, then the Infrastructure Master will never think there are changes to objects that reside in other domains because the Global Catalog will keep it constantly updated. This would result in the Infrastructure Master never replicating changes to other domain controllers in its domain. I also recommend that the PDC Emulator and RID Master be on the same server. This is not mandatory like the Infrastructure Master and the Global Catalog server above, but is recommended. Also, since the PDC Emulator will receive more traffic than any other FSMO role holder, it should be on a server that can handle...
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...The general concept of Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles working closely together with Active Directory (AD) using five specific server roles. When it comes to installing Active Directory Domain Services it creates a forest which holds all the FSMO’s roles for each new domain that you add to active directory. FSMO roles have been implemented to perform a job that avoids corruption due to conflicting simultaneous changes; they are performed by one specific server that prevents database corruption. These five specific server roles are divided between domain-wide and forest-wide operations. There are three roles that are domain specific these include, Relative Identifier (RID) Master, Infrastructure Master, and Primary Domain Controller (PDC) Emulator. The RID has a responsibility of creating a team of identifiers used when new accounts, groups, and computers are created. This is a part of security identifiers (SID) which is used to identify an object throughout the domain. The Infrastructure Master is accountable for replicated changes to an object’s SID or distinguished name (DN). Infrastructure Master and global catalog work closely together but are not serviced on the same domain controller due to the fact that if they were on the same domain controller it would be difficult to know the other information has changed. Last one on the list the Primary Domain Controller Emulator (PDC) is held accountable for managing time synchronization within a domain edits to...
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...Site to Site Connectivity Scenario With the two site taking long to replicate or not replicating at all I would first check the time that is set to replicate and if there is even a connection at all. Open the console and service site link and note how long this configuration is set for replication. Then I would try and duplication the problem. Create a new object in the Active Directory and replicate. Compare the time it took to the time set on the configuration. There are many other ways you could troubleshoot this issue. Open command prompt and run repadmin /?. This will show you many helpful commands you can run to troubleshoot this issue. In repadmin /showrepl command helps you understand the replication topology and replication failures. It reports status for each source domain controller from which the destination has an inbound connection object. The status report is categorized by directory partition. Use the /repsto parameter to display outbound partners. The /replicate command tests replication success after you remove suspected fault conditions without waiting for the replication schedule to open /replsummary will Identifies domain controllers that are failing inbound replication or outbound replication, and summarizes the results in a report. Like I noted before there are many options to troubleshoot this another tool I would like to leave you with is a command line tool DCDiag. This will analyze the state of one or all domain controllers in the forest and reports...
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...Chapter 1: 1. Which of the following items is a valid leaf object in Active Directory? a. Domain b. User c. Application partition d. OU 2. Which of the following domain controllers can be joined to a forest that is currently set at the Windows Server 2008 forest functional level? a. Windows 2000 b. Windows Server 2003 c. Windows Server 2008 d. Windows NT 4.0 3. You are planning an Active Directory implementation for a company that currently has sales, accounting, and marketing departments. All department heads want to manage their own users and resources in Active Directory. What feature will permit you to set up Active Directory to allow each manager to manage his or her own container but not any other containers? a. Delegation of control b. Read-only domain controller c. Multimaster replication d. SRV records 4. The process of keeping each domain controller in synch with changes that have been made elsewhere on the network is called __________. a. Copying b. Osmosis c. Transferring d. Replication 5. The __________ Domain Controller contains a copy of the ntds.dit file that cannot be modified and does not replicate its changes to other domain controllers within Active Directory. a. Secondary b. Primary c. Read-Only d. Mandatory 6. What type of trust is new to Windows Server 2008 and is only available when the forest functionality is set to Windows Server 2008? a. Parent-child trust b. Two-way...
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...we need to know to effectively accomplish this, including the number of DCs, geographical placement, number of domains/forests etc. Ideally, all servers should run the latest version of windows and take advantage of all the advanced features available with the newest software. DC deployment configuration Decisions to make- Deploy a separate forest without any trusts? Deploy a new forest with federation? Deploy a new forest with Windows Server Active Directory forest trust for Kerberos? Extend Corp forest by deploying a replica DC? Extend Corp forest by deploying a new child domain or domain tree? Factors to consider- Security- what is your security plan? Compliance- is there any compliance codes or concerns? Cost- what is the budget? Resiliency and fault-tolerance- is there any implemented? Application compatibility- software and hardware compatibility Geographical Placement There can be a central location where all servers are located and use WAN links for sites to query DCs and DNS servers for network resources. Also, you may place DCs at sites if bandwidth utilization is at a premium. Needed to determine the number of DCs Collect the network info Plan domain controller placement Create a site design Create a site link design Create a site link bridge Example Figure 1: Hierarchy of Active Directory Forests and Domains (Reserved.) Bibliography Reserved., C. ©. (n.d.). kurtdillard.com. Retrieved 04 16, 2013, from...
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...Active Directory Accounts Active Directory Accounts There is a lot of default groups for users called built in groups. In this paper I will be addressing four of them and the security and risk that arise with them. First we have the administrators group, in this group there are not many users do to the amount of permissions that are bestowed upon the user. They have complete control over everything otherwise known as Full Control which means they can read write execute modify and delete but believe you me myself would detour anybody but a certain few the power to delete. So by default the built in group Administrators gives full control so only a select few will be put into this group and in most cases just one person. Also the administrators group allows the user to have complete control over the domain controllers to add users and set permissions. So the only people you would ever see in this group are Network Administrators. There are a lot of other things this group can do but for this paper that’s all I’m getting into. The next built in group I’ll be talking about is the Account Operators with this account the users are limited when it comes to permissions. They can modify and delete user and user group information but only on their local domain but they can’t modify anything having to do with administrators. So locally they could cause a threat to local groups and users but across the network they have no control so if there is an issue to arise cause by a member...
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...they plan on having. A follow up would be what the specifications of each server would be, and their maximum expected workload. After determining the number of domain controllers, I would ask where they would be physically located. Does the company have multiple sites? Do each of these sites require the same resources, or are the demands different depending on the location? Once we have the answers to these questions, we can start to plan out how we are going to implement our FSMO roles, and where to place the global catalogs for maximum efficiency. In a smaller environment, we can co-locate the schema and domain naming master on the same domain controller as the global catalog. Assuming we have three domain controllers per site, we can then have the PDC EMU and the RID master on the same domain controller as well, with the infrastructure master being on the less populated server. This is a generalized outline of where to place your FSMO roles, and the needs will change based upon how large the network is, and the demands of the...
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...Active Directory. You also need to develop a monitoring scheme to ensure the new Active Directory environment remains available. Explain this backup and recovery plan along with the tools needed to monitor the active directory environment. Active Directory domain services are a crucial and vital component for a windows workplace. Any failure can result in serious damages. Failure from corruption can result in being unable to log in and the inability to access data from the directory database. To back up Active Directory, you must install the Windows Server Backup feature from the Server Manager console. At a minimum, we need to back up two domain controllers in each domain, one of which should be an operations master role holder (excluding the relative ID (RID) master, which should not be restored). A good backup includes at least the system state and the contents of the system disk. Backing up the system disk ensures that all the required system files and folders are present so you can successfully restore the data. Restoring Active Directory can be done using the Windows Server Backup utility as well. A non-authoritative restore returns the domain controller to its state at the time of backup, then allows normal replication to overwrite that state with any changes that have occurred after the backup was taken. After you restore the system state, the domain controller queries its replication partners. The replication partners replicate any changes to the restored domain controller...
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