In any secure environment, actively monitor AD DS as part of the overall security strategy. Auditing identifies successful and unsuccessful attempts to modify Active Directory objects, revealing unauthorised logon attempts to computers or network folders.
Monitoring AD DS using Reliability and Performance Monitor
Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor tracks how applications and services affect performance, creates logs and takes action when user-defined optimal performance thresholds are exceeded.
Monitoring AD DS using Event Viewer
Monitoring server health is an important part of OS maintenance and administration. Event Viewer lets you view, manage and monitor events recorded in event logs.
Configuring the user environment using Group Policy (GPO)
Group Policy can configure many aspects of the user environment in bulk, such as folder redirection, running scripts and deploying corporate software.
Group Policy Reporting and Modeling
Planning new Group Policies or troubleshooting existing ones can be difficult in a complex corporate network and restriction structure. Two tools simplify this work: Group Policy Reporting and Group Policy Modeling and they are available in the administration console Group Policy Management
What is Group Policy?
Group Policy manages permissions and settings in bulk for computers and signed-in users. Collections of settings, called Group Policy Objects (GPOs), change specific computer or user behaviours. Linking GPOs to organisational units (OUs) in AD applies them only to selected computers or users. Changing one GPO can therefore manage potentially thousands of computers or users.
AD DS sites and their connections (Sites and Site Links)
AD sites and site links define the physical network structure, allowing replication to reflect connection speeds where DCs are located. Sites and subnets also let workstations determine their current location and nearest DC. For example, a computer moved from New York to Czech Republic can detect from its assigned IP address that it is in a different subnet, belonging to another site with different DCs.
AD DS replication
The AD database consists of partitions that can replicate independently. Specifically, Schema, and Configurationalways replicate forest-wide, Domainreplicates within its domain, and Applicationreplicates according to predefined rules. Also remember the Global Catalog (GC), which replicates throughout the forest, but only between other GCs.
What is a UPN (User Principal Name)?
UPN (user principal name) is a logon method used in Windows networks since version 2003. A UPN has two parts: a suffix and a prefix. Take suzan@WoodgroveBank.local as an example.
- UPN prefix is suzan
- UPN suffix is WoodgroveBank.local
By default, the suffix is the name of the domain where the user was created. Additional suffixes can be added so users can sign in with another name (such as their email address), but the suffix must be unique throughout the forest.
AD DS trusts
AD DS trusts allow mutual trust (authentication) between domains and forests. Users can authenticate in their own domain and use their credentials (security ticket) to access shared resources in another domain.