Planning The Active Directory Infrastructure Design

By Author: Mike Jones
Total Articles: 256
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This lesson introduces you to the Active Directory infrastructure design CompTIA A+ certification. It also explains the tools you need to create an infrastructure design and provides an overview of the design process. In each stage of the design process, the basic reasons for defining each component of Active Directory in the design are discussed. It is important that you understand the value of planning your Active Directory infrastructure before you attempt implementation. You should also have basic knowledge of the reasons for defining Active Directory components in a design.
The information stored in the directory is logically partitioned into four units of replication in the following partitions: schema partition, configuration partition, domain partition, and application partition.
Active Directory replicates information in two ways: intrasite (within a site), and intersite (between sites).
A trust relationship is a link between two domains in which the trusting domain honors the logon authentication of the trusted domain. Windows Server 2003 sup?ports the following ...
... trust relationships: tree-root trust, parent-child trust, shortcut trust, external trust, forest trust, and realm trust.
Group policies are collections of user and computer configuration settings A plus benefits that can be linked to computers, sites, domains, and OUs to specify the behavior of users' desktops. GPOs are collections of Group Policy settings.
DNS is a service used in TCP/IP networks, such as the Internet, to locate computers and services through user-friendly names. Active Directory uses DNS as its domain naming and location service.
Before you implement Active Directory in your organization, you need to devise some type of plan. An Active Directory infrastructure design is a plan you create that represents your organization's network infrastructure. You use this plan to determine how you will configure Active Directory to store information about objects on your network and make the information available to users and network administrators.
Because your Active Directory infrastructure design is key to the success of your Windows Server 2003 deployment, you must thoroughly gather information for, develop, and test your design before deployment. A significant amount of rethinking, redevelopment, and retesting might also be necessary at various points during the design process to ensure that your design meets the needs of your organization. An effective infrastructure design helps you provide a cost-effective deployment, eliminating the need to spend MCSE study guides free download time and money reworking your infrastructure.