Hello, welcome to the first free video for
your free training course for Active Directory. This completely free course for Active Directory
will help you implement and install active directory in your organization as well as
prepare you for the 70 640 exam. Before I get starting installing, setting
up and using Active Directory, the first question you may want answered is what is Active Directory?
Active Directory is essentially a database. To better understand Active Directory first
of all consider a world without a system like Active Directory. In this world without active
directory every computer on the network has its own small database of usernames and passwords.
Microsoft calls this kind of set up a work group. Essentially a work group is every man
for themselves and there is no central control. When you attempt to access anther computer
on the network your current user name and password is send to this computer. To allow
you to have access to the other computer it is a simple matter of creating a username
and password on that computer. This presents two problems. Firstly it does
not scale well. When you have a small network with only a few computers you can keep this
under control without too much administrative effect. Imagine if your network grew to 10
computers. Each time a new person needs access or an old person needs to be removed, you
would need to visit each of the computers that are affected by that change. Now imagine
you have 50 or 100 computers. You can see that this quickly becomes unmanageable.
The second problem occurs when a user changes their password. When this occurs and they
attempt to access anther computer on the network the passwords will be different. Because of
this the user will be prompted for a username and password when attempting to access the
other computer. The user can then use their old password to access the computer or the
password needs to be updated on the remote computer to reflect the password change.
The problem occurs because there is no way to keep all the usernames and passwords in
sync with each other. In order to do this you could use a centralized username and password
system like Active Directory. Active Directory keeps a centralized store of usernames and
passwords. Any changes to usernames and passwords are recorded by Active Directory and all computers
on the network have access to this information. When looking into using Active Directory the
first thing you should ask yourself is do you need Active Directory? Installing systems
like Active Directory do cost money and also mean you need to install dedicated servers
to store the Active Directory database. If you have a small home or business network
Active Directory would be over kill for your needs. If you are using a pure
windows 7 network at home you may want to consider using HomeGroup
rather than installing products like Active Directory. HomeGroup allows computers
to access each other resources on the network using one password. HomeGroup is good for
home users who don’t require large systems like Active Directory to share some files
or printers. So now that you understand why you would need a system like Active Directory,
what exactly is Active Directory? Active Directory provides centralized control
over your network but still flexible enough that it can be distributed across the world.
We already know that it can be used to store user names and passwords, but it can also
be used to store resources. Things like printer information and share information can be stored
in Active Directory. Next Active Directory can be used to store
information for services like e-mail. If you install Exchange on your network Exchange
is integrated very heavily into Active Directory. In fact Exchange can’t be installed without
Active Directory. Lastly Active Directory stores group policy settings. Group policy
allows you to make centralized changes to computers on your network quickly and easily.
There may seem there is a lot to Active Directory already but just remember that Active Directory
is a database. Everything in the Active Directory database is an object. In Active Directory
everything is an object regardless of whether it is a user account, group policy or a printer.
Active Directory is essential a database that holds objects.
In order for users and computers to be put into a logical management structure, Microsoft
allows you to create a domain. A domain is a logical group of computers that share the
same Active Directory database. All computers in a domain also share the same namespace.
For example, if you had IT Free Training dot com as your domain name space, then any
computer in that domain will share that name space like p c 1 dot IT Free Training Dot
com. Usually a domain will mirror the company organization.
If for example IT Free Training was to have a smaller company in London, a separate domain
could be created for this company to keep administration separate from the parent company.
The London Company could be called UK dot IT Free Training dot com.
If IT Free Training was to purchase anther company called high cost training, this company
domain could be linked to the existing domains. Each of the companies has their own active
directory database and all have their own settings. From an administrative point of
view they are separate domains with their own database. If you were to make a change
to group policy in one domain it will not affect the other domain. As you will see later
on in the course you can share resources and user account between domains even though they
are separate domains. Notice that when talking about Active Directory
and domains they are represented a special way. Triangles represent a domain. Between
domains there can be a trust relationship. These are shown by the lines between the triangles.
Inside these triangles or domains you can put users and computers and other Active Directory
objects. Different literacy may represent Active Directory objects in different ways,
but if you think about the triangles being the domains and anything inside the triangles
being part of that domain you can’t go wrong. Now that we know what Active Directory is
and what a domain is, next we need to talk about the next big player in a domain and
that is a domain controller. A domain controller put in its simplest terms runs Active Directory
domain services. As soon as this role is added to a Windows Server it becomes a domain controller.
That may sound a little bit confusing at present but to put it another way a domain controller
holds a copy of the Active Directory database. A domain controller or D C will replicate
any changes made to it local copy of the active directory database to other Domain Controllers.
This is how Active Directory keeps it database up to date when there are copies of the same
database all around the world. Each domain controller replicates its changes through
the network to the other domain controllers and those domain controllers replicated their
changes back. Lastly a domain controller primary job is
to authenticate users. Once the user is authenticated and allowed access to the network a domain
controller also determines what the user can and can’t have access to.
This should give you a good idea of what Active Directory is, Domain are and the role of the
domain controller. In the next video I will look at the features in Windows Server 2008,
Windows Server 2008 R 2 and service pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2. I hope you have
enjoyed this free training video for active directory. For more free videos please check
out are web site or you tube channel. Thanks for watching.
