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Active Directory (codename Cascade) is an implementation of LDAP directory services by Microsoft for use in Windows environments. Active Directory allows administrators to assign enterprise wide policies, deploy programs to many computers, and apply critical updates to an entire organization. An Active Directory stores information and settings relating to an organization in a central, organized, accessible database. Active Directory networks can vary from a small installation with a few hundred objects, to a large installation with millions of objects.

Active Directory was previewed in 1996, released first with Windows 2000, and saw some revision to extend functionality and improve administration in Windows Server 2003.

Structure

Objects

An Active Directory (AD) structure is a hierarchical framework of objects. The objects fall into three broad categories — resources (e.g. printers), services (e.g. e-mail), and people (accounts, or users and groups). The AD provides information on the objects, organizes the objects, controls access, and sets security.

Each object represents a single entity — whether a user, a computer, a printer, an application, or a shared data source — and its attributes. Objects can also be containers of other objects. An object is uniquely identified by its name and has a set of attributes — the characteristics and information that the object can contain — defined by and depending on its type. The attributes, the basic structure of the object itself, are defined by a schema, which also determines the kind of objects that can be stored in the AD.

The schema itself is made up of two types of objects: schema class objects and schema attribute objects. A single schema class object defines one type of object that can be created by AD — for instance, it allows a User object to be created — and a schema attribute object defines an attribute that objects can have.

Each attribute object can be used in several different schema class objects. Those objects are known as schema objects, or metadata, and exist to allow the schema to be extended or modified when necessary. However, because each schema object is integral to the definition of AD objects, deactivating or changing these objects can have serious consequences because it will fundamentally change the structure of AD itself. A schema object, when altered, will automatically propagate through Active Directory and once it is created it can only be deactivated — not deleted. Changing the schema is not something that is usually done without some planning

Forests, Trees and Domains

The framework that holds the objects is viewed at a number of levels. At the top of the structure is the Forest - the collection of every object, its attributes and rules (attribute syntax) in the AD. The forest holds one or more transitive trust linked Trees. A tree holds one or more Domains and domain trees, again, linked in a transitive trust hierarchy. Domains are identified by their DNS name structure, the namespace. A domain has a single DNS name.

The objects held within a domain can be grouped into containers called Organizational Units (OUs). OUs give a domain a hierarchy, ease its administration, and can give a semblence of the structure of the AD's company in organisational or geographical terms. OUs can contain OUs - indeed, domains are containers in this sense - and can hold multiple nested OUs. Microsoft recommends as few domains as possible in AD and a reliance on OUs to produce structure and improve the implementation of policies and administration. The OU is the common level at which to apply group policies, which are AD objects themselves called Group Policy Objects (GPOs), although policies can also be applied to domains or sites (see below). The OU is the lowest level at which administrative powers can be delegated.

As a further subdivision AD supports the creation of Sites, which are physical, rather than logical, groupings defined by one or more IP subnets. Sites distinguish between locations connected by low-speed (e.g. WAN, VPN) and high-speed (e.g. LAN) connections. Sites can contain one or more domains and domains can contain one or more sites. This is important to control network traffic generated by replication.

The actual division of the company's information infrastructure into a hierarchy of one or more domains and top-level OUs is a key decision. Common models are by business, by geographical location, or by IT roles. These models are also often used in combination.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Active Directory ]

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Games - Active Directory

Structure

Objects

Forests, Trees and Domains

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