IT Pros. Last Week in Ransomware: Week of August 16th. Last Week in Ransomware: Week of August 9th. Last Week in Ransomware: Week of August 2nd. Choose a Session X. Does your cybersecurity start at the heart? HostPilot What is Active Directory and why is it so important? Tags: admins , IT , system administration.
About The Intermedia Team Intermedia is a Unified Communications as a Service UCaaS and business applications provider hyper-focused on delivering easy-to-use and secure communication and collaboration solutions to SMBs and the partners that serve them.
Subscribe to our Blog via Email Email Address. In short, a directory service is what connects users to their IT resources, and AD has done that for users to their Windows resources for almost two decades. Looking for a more in-depth answer? We also have a full blog covering why AD is important. Objects can include users, laptops, servers, and even groups of other objects explained below. AD enables admins to manage sets of multiple objects and these sets are known as groups. Using GPOs group policy objects , an admin can make a change on one group and have that change apply to all objects within that group.
A forest describes a collection of trees, which denote a collection of domains. So, what are trees and domains? Well, a domain is a collection of users, computers, and devices that are part of the same Active Directory database. If an organization has multiple locations, they may have a seperate domain for each one.
For example, an international organization could have a domain for their London office, another one for their New York office, and a third one for their Tokyo office. A tree could be used to group all three of those domains as branches belonging to the same tree, so to speak. An organization that has multiple trees could then group them into a forest. This is a core concept of Active Directory and can be complicated. A domain controller is any server that is running Active Directory Domain Services.
At least one domain controller is necessary to use Active Directory, though most organizations have at least two per location. Large, multinational organizations may require dozens of domain controllers across each of their physical locations in order to ensure high availability for their AD instance.
Generally, DCs are thought of being tied to a physical office, which in the current remote work environment can be challenging. Individual users and their systems are connected to the domain controller through the network. When users request access to objects within the Active Directory Database, AD processes that request and either authorizes or prevents access to the object.
The authentication and access occurs seamlessly. But this concept begins to fall apart as non-Windows resources are introduced. It also struggles if users are remote and not physically attached to the domain — in this case, the end user will need to VPN into the network and be authenticated by the DC in order to gain access to their on-prem, Windows-based resources.
Note that Microsoft has also extended the concept of a domain to Azure. This domain is separate and distinct from the on-prem domains, although the two can be bridged through a variety of connective technology including Azure AD Connect and Azure AD. We should also note that there is a new concept called the Domainless Enterprise , which is taking the approach of eliminating the domain concept, but still retaining the idea of securely and frictionlessly accessing IT resources wherever they may be.
This concept is especially helpful for organizations that leverage web applications, cloud infrastructure, and non-Windows platforms e. When Active Directory Domain Services is installed on a server, it becomes known as a domain controller. This server stores the Active Directory Database, which contains a hierarchy of objects and their relationship to one another. Active Directory is managed by an admin through a thick-client GUI graphical user interface that resembles the file manager in Windows pictured above.
This application runs on a Windows server and is not a modern browser-based application. Admins can point, click, and drag objects within AD and adjust their settings by right-clicking with the mouse and accessing the dropdown menu. The concept can be a great deal of work with a lot of moving parts: synchronize your on-prem AD with Azure AD Connect and you can connect your existing database of user identities and groups to Azure cloud-based resources.
By that, we mean that AD can provide a single sign-on experience for users by centralizing access to all Windows-based resources within the database. Further, those resources were all on-prem or at minimum connected to the domain. Today, many organizations still supplement their Active Directory with a browser-based web application SSO tool. However, new business requirements have driven the concept of SSO to now extend to devices, networks, file servers, and more, so the modern concept of SSO goes beyond just access to Windows resources or even web applications.
The trees in a forest can also trust each other, and will also share directory schemas, catalogs, application information, and domain configurations. Organizational Units: An OU is used to organize users, groups, computers, and other organizational units. Some of those services have been listed below:. It provides only a subset of the AD DS features, which makes it more versatile in terms of where it can be run.
For example, it can be run as a stand-alone directory service without needing to be integrated with a full implementation of Active Directory. Certificate Services: You can create, manage and share encryption certificates, which allow users to exchange information securely over the internet. Rights Management Services: AD RMS is a set of tools that assists with the management of security technologies that will help organizations keep their data secure.
Such technologies include encryption, certificates, and authentication, and cover a range of applications and content types, such as emails and Word documents. A comprehensive step-by-step guide to setting up Active Directory on Windows Server is beyond the scope of this article.
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