Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Design and Implementation: Creating, Migrating, and Merging Networks

Written by an experienced Active Directory designer and implementor, this book walks you through the concepts of the Active Directory, and the design issues associated with various business environments, outlining strategies, principles and best-practice for creating the design, before leading you through the implementation step-by-step.

A well thought-out Active Directory provides a solid foundation for other services which will lower support costs and allow companies to centrally manage their environment. You should look at the Active Directory as your first step in moving to a centrally managed, highly integrated IT environment that supports efficient and effective delivery of business capabilities. Once the appropriate technical infrastructure is in place, it is vital to leverage that infrastructure to create an enterprise-class application infrastructure.

While the basics of the Active Directory are straightforward, to get the most from it requires careful planning and a thorough understanding of what can be accomplished. For any environment there are a number of core stages in the Active Directory implementation; the 3 Ds: discovery, design, and deployment. In this unique book, we take a broad range of environment types and work through these stages; suggesting an Active Directory design specific to that environment, and how to implement it; at each stage providing clear instructions so the decisions are clearly understood and the best-practice principles will be maintained throughout your system’s lifetime. There are many books on using, administering, or even deploying Active Directory, but this is the only book that exists to relate the crucial design aspects to your target environment, and show you to implement this design.

This book covers discovery, design and deployment stages of Active Directory implementation in the following scenarios:

• A small, single location company with fairly basic needs and a basic Windows NT 4.0 domain

• A larger company with multiple regional areas which are currently facilitated by multiple NT 4.0 domains

• A retail-type business with very different drivers and requirements from that of a standard business, based on Windows 2000 Active Directory

• Merging and restructuring the Active Directory infrastructure of two financial institutions

This book is for Windows network administrators, analysts, or architects, with a grasp of the basic operations of Active Directory, and are looking for a book that goes beyond rudimentary operations. However, all of the concepts are explained from the ground up, and the book can be read by network design and administration professionals with no prior Active Directory knowledge.