To implement an Active directory infrastructure in your organization, you need a proper planning that includes creating a forest plan, domain plan, organizational unit plan, and a site topology. After, you have your AD infrastructure plan ready with a domain structure, domain name, storage location of database log files, location of shared system folder, DNS configuration, you can continue with configuring your first domain controller that will implement Active Directory in your domain/forest.
The first domain controller that you install in your organization becomes the first forest root, first domain tree, first domain, and first site installed on your network. You can install Active Directory in your network in a number of ways. You can use Active Directory Installation Wizard to install Active Directory, an Answer File to Perform an Unattended Installation, Using a Network or Backup Media, and using the ‘Configure Your Server’ Wizard to install Active Directory.
The logical components in Active Directory are stored in a logical structure that contains domains, organizational units, and trees. These logical components allow the grouping of resources of the AD objects. The logical components of an Active directory include:
Domain: It can span different physical locations and uses access control list (ACL) of an object to decide the access rights of the objects.
Organizational units (OU): It is a container object of a domain that is used to organize objects into logical administrative group.
Trees: It is a hierarchical group of domains that belong to a same tree and share contiguous namespace and hierarchical naming structure, as shown in Figure 2- 20. Figure 2-20
Forests: It is a hierarchical grouping of one or more independent trees. It allows all the domains under it share a common schema and a common global catalog. All the domains in a forest however operate independently but are linked by implicit two-way transitive trusts and thus the communication across all the domains of an organization is possible. The trees in a forest can have their own naming structure according to their domains, as shown in Figure 2-21: Figure 2-21 Section 3.1: Figure 2-21
Configure Domain Name System (DNS) for Active Directory
