Learn Active Directory Management in a Month of Lunches

Book excerpt: Summary Learn Active Directory Management in a Month of Lunches is a practical, hands-on tutorial designed for IT pros new to Active Directory. It skips the theory and concentrates on the day-to-day administration tasks you need to know to keep your network running smoothly. Just set aside an hour a day for a month—lunchtime would be perfect—and you'll be comfortable and productive with Active Directory before you know it. About the Book At the heart of your Windows network is Active Directory, the control center for administration, security, and other core management functions. If you're new to Active Directory administration—or if you find yourself unexpectedly thrust into that role—you'll need to get up to speed fast. Learn Active Directory Management in a Month of Lunches is a hands-on tutorial designed for IT pros new to Active Directory. Without assuming previous administration experience, the book starts by walking you through the most important day-to-day system management tasks. You'll learn how to administer AD both from the GUI tools built into Windows and by using PowerShell at the command line. Along the way, you'll touch on best practices for managing user access, setting group policies, automating backups, and more. This book assumes no prior experience with Active Directory or Windows administration. Examples are based in Windows Server 2012 Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. What's Inside ADM tasks you'll need every day GUI and command line techniques Content tested by new administrators Well-illustrated, clearly explained examples About the Author Richard Siddaway is an experienced all-around Windows administrator with two decades of experience. He's the author of PowerShell in Practice andPowerShell and WMI, and coauthor of PowerShell in Depth. Table of Contents PART 1 MANAGING ACTIVE DIRECTORY DATA Before you begin Creating user accounts Managing user accounts Managing groups Troubleshooting users and groups Managing computer accounts Managing organizational units PART 2 MANAGING GROUP POLICY Creating Group Policies Managing Group Policies Fine-grained password policies PART 3 MANAGING THE ACTIVE DIRECTORY SERVICE Creating domain controllers Managing domain controllers Protecting AD data Security: Default groups and delegation Managing DNS Managing sites and subnets AD replication Managing AD trusts PART 4 MAINTENANCE AND TROUBLESHOOTING Troubleshooting your AD Maintaining and monitoring Active Directory Future work and final exam Into the cloud