Dishan Francis - Mastering Active Directory: Design, deploy, and protect Active Directory Domain Services for Windows Server 2022, 3rd Edition

Microsoft Active Directory is the most widely used identity management solution. It can centrally manage identities across its infrastructure. It is equipped with different role services, features, and components that help us handle identities securely and effectively according to business requirements. For the last 20 years, Microsoft has continued improving Active Directory, and Active Directory 2022 further consolidates its approach in terms of rectifying industry requirements and protecting identity infrastructures from emerging security threats. However, a technology-rich product is not simply going to make a productive, reliable, scalable, and secure identity infrastructure. It requires knowledge of Active Directory roles services, components, and features. It also requires knowledge of how to use those effectively to match different operational requirements. Only then can we plan, design, manage, and maintain a robust identity infrastructure. Over the past few years, more and more organizations have adopted cloud technologies for a variety of reasons. With the growth of the cloud footprint, organizations' identity requirements have also changed. We can no longer limit corporate identities to on-prem infrastructures. By using Microsoft Azure Active Directory, we can extend our on-prem identities to the cloud. The hybrid AD approach provides lots of benefits for modern authentication requirements. However, security-wise, it also opens up a whole new level of challenges. Therefore, the majority of new content in the third edition is related to designing the Azure AD hybrid cloud, securing a hybrid AD environment, and protecting sensitive data.

If you are an Active Directory administrator, system administrator, or network professional who has basic knowledge of Active Directory and is looking to become an expert in this topic, this book is for you.

Chapter 1, Active Directory Fundamentals, explains what Active Directory is and its capabilities. This chapter also explains the main components (physical and logical structure), object types, and role services of Active Directory. Last but not least, this chapter also covers why we need an advanced identity management solution such as Azure Active Directory.

Chapter 2, Active Directory Domain Services 2022, explains what we can expect with Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) 2022 and how we can use the features introduced in AD DS 2016 (as there is no new Domain Functional Level (DFL) or Forest Functional Level (FFL) ) to improve your existing Active Directory environment.

Chapter 3, Designing an Active Directory Infrastructure, talks about what needs to be considered in Active Directory infrastructure design. This chapter discusses how to place the AD DS logical and physical components in the AD DS environment according to best practices. It also covers the design concepts for hybrid identity.

Chapter 4, Active Directory Domain Name System, explains how DNS works with AD DS. This chapter also includes information about the DNS server component, different types of DNS records, zones, DNS delegation, and DNS policies.

Chapter 5, Placing Operations Master Roles, talks about the Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles and their responsibilities. This chapter also describes things we need to consider when placing FSMO roles in an Active Directory environment.

Chapter 6, Migrating to Active Directory 2022, covers the different AD DS deployment models. This chapter also provides a step-by-step guide to migrating from an older version of AD DS to AD DS 2022.