1. Active Directory An intermediate look By Chris Baran

2. What Does It Do? Keeps a central list of users and passwords Provide a set of serer to act as “authentication servers” or “logon servers” know as domain controllers Maintain a searchable index of the things in the domain, making it easier for people to find resources

3. That’s Not All, It Also Lets you create users with different levels of powers, from nearly powerless guest accounts to regular users accounts to all-powerful domain-wide administrators. Any range of permissions from guests to administrators is possible Allows you to subdivide your domains into sub domains called organizational units or OUs. You can then assign varying amounts of control and power over these OUs to particular individuals.

4. Security: Who’s Allowed on the Network? (Authentication) Authentication: Suppose Ivana asks for a sales report The Web server containing the sales reports asks her workstations, “Who’s asking for this data?” The workstation replies, “Ivana.” The server then says, “prove it” and a password dialogue box pops up. Assuming she typed correctly the server compares her username and password against a list it has and allows her access

5. Security: Who’s Allowed on the Network? (Authorization) The mere fact that she has proven that she’s Ivana may not be sufficient reason for the Web server to give her acces to the sales pages. The server then looks at another list sometimes known as the access control list, a list of people and access levels to see if she is allowed to look at it.

6. Maintain a “Directory” of Users and Other Network Objects Every minimally secure OS has some file to keep username and password pairs Early version of NT, from 3.1 through 4 used a file called SAM (Security Accounts Manager) All NT Based OSes still use SAM MS Domains use Active Directory (in the NTDS.DIT file)

7. Setting The Stage Active Directory is quite simply a Multi- Master Database It’s a Directory because its optimized for lookups not insertions/deletions