What is an Active Directory?
Microsoft Windows has a technology called active directory or AD for short. It was developed in 1996. It was previewed in 1999. Then it was released in Windows 2000 server edition. It was revised and extended for the Windows Server 2003. It was further refined for Windows server 2008 and renamed to Active Directory Domain Service.
An AD is used for a variety of network services. It is used to store information and data about networks and domains. The directory uses a central database. This lets administrators assign policies, share software, and do critical updates to the whole organization. It can be a small installation with a few computers, users and printers all using the central database. It can also consist of thousands of users, different domains and large server farms covering several geographical locations all using the central database. An AD network can be small, very large and anything in between.
An active directory is a hierarchical structure usually broken into three main categories considered objects. There are resources like printers and scanners. Then there are the services such as email. The last component is users, which are defined as user accounts or groups. The AD provides information on the objects. It also organized the objects. AD will also control access and set securities.
Each object is actually a single entity and its attributes. It could be a user, a computer, a scanner. It can even be a group. Objects are also the main functions of the domain and network it can even be security settings set by the administrator. Object can contain other objects within its file structure. An ID is given to all objects or object name. An object name or ID can be the folder name. Each object has unique attributes that allows it to be characterized by the informationion within it. Schemas are what the settings or object characterizations are called.
One important note is that an AD does not provide software distribution. Software distribution is done by a separate service. An active directory only provides a mechanism that other services can use to provide software distribution. The services that do the software distribution use proprietary schema attributes and works with LDAP protocol.
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Rob Thomas - About Author:Sturat enjoys writing articles on topics like Active Directory and Active Directory articles.
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