OBTAIN AN IP ADDRESS BY USING DHCPBEFORE YOU BEGIN THIS EXERCISE, YOU...

14-13Lesson 1 Overview of Active Directory❑

An OU is a container used to organize objects within a domain into logical

administrative groups. An OU can contain objects such as user accounts,

groups, computers, printers, applications, file shares, and other OUs.

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A tree is a grouping or hierarchical arrangement of one or more Active Direc-

tory domains that share a contiguous namespace.

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A forest is a grouping or hierarchical arrangement of one or more trees that

forms a disjointed namespace.

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The physical structure of Active Directory is based the underlying network. Major

components of the physical structure include the following:

❑

A domain controller is a computer running Windows 2000 Server or Windows

Server 2003 that stores a replica of the domain directory (local domain data-

base). You can create any number of domain controllers in a domain. Each

domain controller in a given domain has a complete replica of that domain’s

directory partition.

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A site is a combination of one or more IP subnets connected by a high-speed

link.

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Within a site, Active Directory automatically generates a ring topology for replica-

tion among domain controllers in the same domain. The ring structure ensures

that there are at least two replication paths from one domain controller to another;

if one domain controller is down temporarily, replication continues to all other

domain controllers.

Lesson 2: Important Active Directory Concepts

There are several new concepts introduced with Active Directory. It is important that

you understand their meaning as applied to Active Directory.

After this lesson, you will be able to■ Describe the purpose of the Active Directory schema■ Describe the purpose of a Global Catalog■ Explain the concept of a namespace■ Identify naming conventions used in Active DirectoryEstimated lesson time: 30 minutes

What Is the Active Directory Schema?

The Active Directory schema defines objects that can be stored in Active Directory. The

schema is a list of definitions that determines the kinds of objects and the type of infor-

mation about those objects that can be stored in Active Directory.

The schema contains two types of definition objects: schema class objects and schema

attribute objects. Class objects and attribute objects are defined in separate lists within

the schema (see Figure 14-6). Schema class and attribute objects are also referred to as

schema objects.

Partial list of schemaattribute objectsclass objectsComputer class accountExpiresobject definitionaccountNameHistoryaCSAggregateTokenRatePerUserDescriptionCommon nameX.500 OIDComputerClass typeCategorycatalogscategoriescategoryIDcategoryID attribute GroupSyntaxRange limitsUsers

F14us06

Figure 14-6 The schema is made up of class objects and attribute objects.