You're reading from Mastering Active Directory, Third Edition - Third Edition

Product typeBook

Published inNov 2021

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781801070393

Edition3rd Edition

Tools

Active Directory Domain Services

Concepts

Networking

Author (1)

Dishan Francis

Active Directory Services – Part 01

With this chapter, we are moving into the third section of this book, which focuses on the Active Directory (AD) server roles. There are five main AD server roles:

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)
Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS)
Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)

We have already looked into many AD components, features, and capabilities, but we are not quite done yet. AD services are attached to many different components, such as Domain Name System (DNS), Distributed File System Replication (DFSR), and group policies. To maintain a healthy AD environment, we need to manage each of these components properly and make sure they do what they are supposed to do. However, in some scenarios, IT professionals and software developers are only interested in AD authentication...

Overview of AD LDS

When we talk about AD, we refer to it as a single service; however, AD DS is a collection of many other components such as DNS, group policies, SYSVOL folder replication, and so on. Each of these components needs to operate well in order to run a healthy AD environment. Managing these components isn't easy; it requires investments in resources, time, and skills. It is not just about service uptime and performance; security also plays a crucial role in this. The failure or compromise of these components/services can have a potential impact on the entire AD infrastructure.

Microsoft Windows Core is also count as operating systems. It doesnt have fancy GUIs or lots of applications running, but still do the job of an operating system. It allow users to build systems from scratch according to their requirements. This also increases the server uptime (fewer updates), reliability, performance, and security. Soon after Microsoft released the first AD version, IT...

Where to use LDS

If we are already using AD DS, then the question will be why we need AD LDS. In the following section, we will look at several scenarios where we can use LDS.

Application development

This is the area that has benefited most from AD LDS capabilities. Application development involves lots of research and testing. If these applications are AD-integrated, it is obvious that they need to be developed and tested within an AD environment. During the development process, you may be required to build many test environments. If they're full-blown AD DS instances, it will take resources, time, and effort to deploy and maintain them. AD LDS allows you to run multiple instances of it within the same environment, independently. Each instance will have its own schema, and engineers can maintain the instance for each application test environment. Even if it looks like a cut-down version, it provides the same AD DS authentication and management capabilities, allowing...

The LDS installation

In the Windows Server 2022 operating system, LDS can be installed using Server Manager. In order to install LDS, a user needs to log in to the selected systems with local administrator privileges.

Once logged in, launch Server Manager and click on Add Roles and Features. Then, follow the wizard, select Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services under Server Roles, and proceed:

Figure 11.1: AD LDS role

Once the role is installed, click on the Post-Deployment Configuration wizard in Server Manager. LDS can be set up in two ways: one is by using a unique instance and the other one is by using a replica of an existing instance. The replica option is similar to using the cloned copy of an existing instance.

This is useful, especially in an application development environment where engineers need to maintain a number of application versions:

Figure 11.2: AD LDS instance type

In the next window, we can define the name and description...

AD replication

Healthy replication is a must for an AD environment. AD uses a multi-master database, so every domain controller in the environment should be aware of every change in an AD database. As well as this, domain controllers should also know about changes in group policies, startup scripts, preference settings, and more. When it comes to replication, it is not only the replication service that is responsible for it. There should be stable network connectivity between domain controllers. This communication media can be copper cables, fiber cables, or even a Software-Defined Network (SDN). In this section, we are going to look at how we can use the AD-integrated features to maintain healthy replication.

FRS versus DFSR

Windows Server 2000 and 2003 use FRS to replicate the SYSVOL folder content between domain controllers. With Windows Server 2008, FRS was deprecated and Microsoft introduced DFSR for SYSVOL folder replication:

...

Sites

Sites can be explained as physical locations that contain various AD objects. We should be able to describe these objects using their boundaries. As an example, users, computers, and network devices located in an office location in London can be treated as a site, and these can be identified as unique from similar objects located in the Seattle office. The AD site topology can be divided into four different designs:

Single domain-single site: This is the most common setup for small- and medium-sized businesses. In this setup, there is one site and one domain. When we set up the first domain controller in the infrastructure, it is set up as a single domain-single site by default. This is easy to maintain.
Single domain-multiple sites: In this setup, the infrastructure has only one domain, and it's extended to multiple sites. These sites can be different buildings on the same campus or different geographical locations. Sites are interconnected using physical...

Summary

We started the chapter by looking into AD LDS and its capabilities. Then, we moved on to AD replication. In that section, we focused on the physical and logical components involved in AD replication and how they can be used to optimize complex replication requirements. More importantly, we also looked into how AD replication happens behind the scenes.

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Author (1)

Dishan Francis

Dishan Francis is an IT professional with over 15 years of experience. He was a six-time Microsoft MVP in enterprise mobility before he joined Microsoft UK as a security consultant. He has maintained the RebelAdmin technology blog over the years, with lots of useful articles that focus on on-premises Active Directory services and Azure Active Directory. He has also written for other Microsoft-managed blogs such as canitpro and ITopsTalk. When it comes to managing innovative identity infrastructure solutions to improve system stability, efficiency, and security, his level of knowledge and experience places him among the very best in the field.
Read more about Dishan Francis

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