Active Directory Administration Cookbook: Actionable, proven solutions to identity management and authentication on servers and in the cloud

Book Description

Active Directory (AD) is an administration system for Windows administrators to automate network, security and access management tasks in the Windows infrastructure.

This book starts off with comprehensive insights into forests, domains, trusts, schemas, and partitions. Next, you’ll learn how to manage domain controllers, organizational units and default containers. You’ll then get up to speed with monitoring Active Directory sites as well as identifying and solving replication problems. Later chapters will cover the different components of Active Directory and demonstrate how to manage users, groups, and computers. You’ll also work through recipes that help you handle your Active Directory domains, user and group objects and computer accounts, and expiring group memberships and Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs) with PowerShell. In addition to this, you’ll understand how to work with Group Policy and get the most out of it. Toward the concluding chapters, you’ll become well-versed with federation, security and monitoring, before going on to learn more about Azure Active Directory, and how to integrate on-premises Active Directory with Azure AD. Finally, you’ll discover how Azure AD Connect synchronization works, which will help you manage Azure AD efficiently.

By the end of this book, you’ll have in-depth knowledge of Active Directory and Azure AD, and have learned effective administration on the cloud and Windows Server 2019.

What you will learn

• Manage new Active Directory features, such as the Recycle Bin, Group Managed Service Accounts, and fine-grained password policies
• Work with Active Directory from the command line and use Windows PowerShell to automate tasks
• Create and remove forests, domains, and trusts
• Create groups, modify group scope and type, and manage memberships
• Delegate control, view and modify permissions
• Optimize Active Directory and Microsoft Azure AD in terms of security

Who this book is for

This book is for administrators of existing Active Directory Domain Service environments or Azure AD tenants looking to optimize their day-to-day productivity. Basic networking and Windows Server operating system knowledge will be useful.

Table of Contents

1. Optimizing Forests, Domains and trusts
2. Managing Domain Controllers
3. Managing Active Directory Roles and Features
4. Managing Containers and Organizational Units
5. Managing Active Directory sites and troubleshooting replication
6. Managing Active Directory users
7. Managing Active Directory groups
8. Managing Active Directory computers
9. Getting the most out of Group Policy
10. Securing Active Directory
11. Managing federation
12. Handling authentication in a hybrid world (AD FS, PHS, PTA and 3SO)
13. Handling synchronization in a hybrid world (Azure AD Connect)
14. Hardening Azure AD