As one having some dreams and prospects of someday becoming a system administrator here are some hints on the ACTIVE DIRECTORY in the field of networking...

Casting a light on the previous topics that were discussed friends I am sure it has been of great help to whoever winked an eye over the pages. But today we are about to take into an expedition of the Active directory briefly and clear so keep your mind on the focus and on the go to experience something that could be a turning block to your world of networking..


This is a directory service that’s created and provided by Microsoft. Active Directory uses a number of standardized protocols that enable it to provide a variety of Network Services and these protocols include the following;
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) which is an industry standard directory access protocol.
Optional Kerberos based Authentication.
DNS which is a based naming and other network Information.

NB: Active directory can also be looked at as the directory service which contains information of all user accounts and the shared resources on the Network. Also we can say that the Active Directory is a centralized Hierarchical Directory Database.
This leaves us with the questions as to why the Active Directory Service was requires and the features below explain the importance of the Active Directory and they are as follows;
 Central location for network administration and security[1]
 Information security and single sign-on for user access to networked resources[1]
 The ability to scale up or down easily[1]
 Standardizing access to application data[1]
 Synchronization of directory updates across servers[1]

 Provide user logon and authentication services using the Kerberos Protocol.
 Centralizes and decentralizes the resource management.
 Centrally organizes and manages;
• User accounts.
• Computers.
• Groups.
• Network Resources.
 Enables authorized users to easily locate Network Resources.
Active Directory stores all information and settings for a deployment in a central database. Active Directory allows administrators to assign policies, deploy and update software. Active Directory networks
can vary from a small installation with a few computers, users and printers to tens of thousands of users, many different network domain and large server farms spanning many geographical locations.

STRUCTURE OF ACTIVE DIRECTORY:
a) Logical structure.
• Domain.
• Tree.
1. Parent/ root.
2. Child/branch.
• Forest.
b) Physical tree.
• Domain Controller.
• Sites.
DOMAIN:

A domain is a logical secure administrative boundary. The initial domain controller creation in a network automatically creates a domain this is because once can’t create the domain without at least one Domain controller to take control of the newly created domain. Each Domain is always identified in the network by the DNS domain Name. For instance DUNSTAN.COM is a domain that only can be identified by the Domain Name System.

TREE:

Trees are collections of one or more domains that allow global resource sharing. A tree may consist of a single domain or multiple domains in a contiguous namespace. Adding a domain to a tree becomes a child of the tree root domain. Domain will be called as parent domain to which child domain is attached. A child domain can also have its multiple child domains. Child domain uses the name followed by parent domain name and gets a unique Domain Name System (DNS).

For example, if DUNSTAN.COM is the root domain, you can create one or more Child domains to DUNSTAN.COM such as NORTH. DUNSTAN.COM or SOUTH. DUNSTAN.COM These "children" may also have child domains created under them, such as SALES.NORTH.DUNSTAN.COM

The domains in a tree have two-way, Kerberos transitive trust relationships. A Kerberos transitive trust simply means that if Domain A trusts Domain B and Domain B trusts Domain C, then Domain A trusts Domain C. Therefore, a domain joining a tree immediately has trust relationships established with every domain in the tree.

FORESTS:

A forest is a collection of multiple trees that share a common global catalog, directory schema, logical structure, and directory configuration. Forest has automatic two-way transitive trust relationships. The very first domain you create in the forest is called the forest root domain.
Forests allow organizations to group their divisions which use different naming scheme, and may need to operate independently. But as an organization they want to communicate with the entire organization via transitive trusts, and share the same schema and configuration container.

DOMAIN CONTROLLER:
On Windows Server System, a domain controller (DC) is a server that responds to security authentication requests (logging in, checking permissions, etc.) within the Windows Server domain.[1] A domain is a concept introduced in Windows NT whereby a user may be granted access to a number of computer resources with the use of a single username and password combination.

SITES:

A Site object in Active Directory represents a geographic location that hosts networks. Sites contain objects called subnets.

Folks for now we can first take in this small piece of information and next time we shall complete the other concepts regarding the Active directory,permissions,profiles and others….but I kindly would like to ask you to go through all the information that’s given hereunder …the concepts adhered here are very vital in the field of networking..