Power of Active Directory in Windows Server 2003 Essay Example for Free

Power of Active Directory in Windows Server 2003 EssayIn order to understand the concept of officious directory first lets draw back a disembodied spirit at directory service. Directory Service is a service which stores information of using and managing different objects of lucre at a centralized point. Those objects include printing servers, file servers, printers telefax servers etc .The directory service stores all of the information regarding the resources and at the same time provides mechanism of easy entranceway to the resources information for the users. Active directory is also a directory service in windows server 2003 which stores information about the netwrok resources and about the services that make this information available to the users. Now lets look at the power and distinguish features of active directory in windows server 2003Multiple selections of directory objects We posterior change the common attributes of many users at the ace time.Drag-and-drop useableity You just need to drag and drop the directory objects from one container to other in order to move themEfficient search capabilities The object oriented searching facility provides efficient search minimizing the traffic on the network. saved queries The active directory queries can be saved, exported, reopened and refreshed, and the results of the attributed queries can also be exported.Active Directory command-line tools A number of command line tools are available to manage the active directory. Those tools are Ntdsutil, Dsget, Dsrm, Dsmod, Csvde, Dsadd, Dsquery, Dsmove and Ldifde. Domain running(a) levels Active directorys plain wide features in your network can be enable using electron orbit functional levels.Forest functional levels The Active directorys forest wide features in your network can also be now enabled using forest functional levels.Secure All Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) traffic All Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) traff ic is signed and encrypted by Active directorys administrative tools, by default. It ensures that the data is not corrupted and that it is coming from the known source.Active directory quota With Active directory quota, the ownership of objects by a user, computer or assort can be limited by assigning quotas.New Group Policy settings more than 200 group policy setting are include in windows server 2003s active directory.New Resultant Set Of Policy (RSoP) Wizard is included which enables you to check the policies assigned to a specific user or computer.Folder redirection is also made very easy.Advanced options for software installation are available, which makes installation process easy and administration effective.InetOrgPerson class has been added to conjure the security and it can be used in the same way as the user class is used.Cross forest support is also provided.The software product Restriction Policies that are included can identify unwanted or hostile soft wares and henc e will not let them execute on the computer. But this requires that the system is either being run on Microsoft Windows XP Professional or on a family member of Windows Server 2003.Domain controller renaming The domain controllers, without demoting, can now be renamed with the active directory of windows server 2003.As well as the domain name can now also be renamed with this.In the domain hierarchy, the domains can be moved from one location to another.The two way transitivity can now be extended by creating forest trust.The users access of one domain or forest can be allowed, disallowed or given selective access to another domain of forest.Unnecessary objects of the schema can be deactivatedIn order to link the auxiliary classes to the objects on dynamic bases, extra support is provided.When the partial attribution set is extended , the resulted administrative actions take place at that time the Tuning global catalog replication is available for preserving global catalogs state of synchronizationAll in all the active directory of Windows server 2003 provides a lot of additional features which to facilitate the management, administration and usage of resources in the network. The security additions are also very notable and a lot of flexibility is given to the administrator to check and configure different parameters of the network. Other than this some work has also to improve the responsiveness of the network and to cater with the network traffic.Flexibility for moving objects and domains, and for renaming them is also made easy .And with the new policies introduced the access of a user from one domain of forest to another can also be a controlled effectively. Providing these all functionalities and flexibilities to the networks administrators and mangers make their tasks of access controls, security, managing of objects etc very easy.ReferencesSpealman, Jill, Hudson, Kurt (2004). Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Infrastructure. Redmond ,Washington Mi crosoft Press.Jones, Don (2003). Windows Server 2003 Weekend Crash course. NewYork Wiley publication Inc..