Active Directory, 2/e (Paperback)

When Microsoft introduced Windows 2000, the most important change was the inclusion of Active Directory. With many great benefits, it continues to be a huge headache for network and system administrators to design, implement and support. The first edition of this book, O'Reilly's best-selling Windows 2000 Active Directory, eased their pain considerably. Now titled Active Directory, 2nd Edition, this book provides system and network administrators, IT professionals, technical project managers, and programmers with a clear, detailed look at Active Directory for both Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

The upgraded Active Directory that ships with Windows Server 2003 has over 100 new and enhanced features and once again, O'Reilly has the answers to puzzling questions. While Microsoft's documentation serves as an important reference, Active Directory, 2nd Edition is a guide to help the curious (and weary) understand the big picture. In addition to the technical details for implementing Active Directory, several new and significantly enhanced chapters describe the numerous features that have been updated or added in Windows Server 2003 along with coverage of new programmatic interfaces that are available to manage it. After reading the book you will be familiar with the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), multi-master replication, Domain Name System (DNS), Group Policy, and the Active Directory Schema, among many other topics.

Authors Robbie Allen and Alistair G. Lowe-Norris are experienced veterans with real-world experience. Robbie is a Senior Systems Architect in the Advanced Services Technology Group at Cisco Systems. He was instrumental in the deployment and automation of Active Directory, DNS and DHCP at Cisco, and is now working on network automation tools. Alistair is an enterprise program manager for Microsoft U.K. and previously worked for Leicester University as the project manager and technical lead of the Rapid Deployment Program for Windows 2000.

Active Directory, 2nd Edition will guide you through the maze of concepts, design issues and scripting options enabling you to get the most out of your deployment.

Table of Contents

Preface 


Part I. Active Directory Basics

1. A Brief Introduction
2. Active Directory Fundamentals
3. Naming Contexts and Application Partitions
4. Active Directory Schema 
5. Site Topology and Replication
6. Active Directory and DNS
7. Profiles and Group Policy Primer


Part II. Designing an Active Directory Infrastructure

8. Designing the Namespace
9. Creating a Site Topology
10. Designing Organization-Wide Group Policies
11. Active Directory Security: Permissions and Auditing
12. Designing and Implementing Schema Extensions
13. Backup, Recovery, and Maintenance

14. Upgrading to Windows Server 2003
15. Migrating from Windows NT
16. Integrating Microsoft Exchange
17. Interoperability, Integration, and Future Direction


Part III. Scripting Active Directory with ADSI, ADO, and WMI

18. Scripting with ADSI
19. IADs and the Property Cache
20. Using ADO for Searching
21. Users and Groups
22. Manipulating Persistent and Dynamic Objects
23. Permissions and Auditing

24. Extending the Schema and the Active Directory Snap-Ins

25. Using ADSI and ADO from ASP or VB

26. Scripting with WMI
27. Manipulating DNS
28. Getting Started with VB.NET and System.DirectoryServices

 
 

 
Index