Introduces the idea of publishing network services and resources into a directory. It will show how objects are used to provide information for locating, binding and configuring the resources. The concepts of AD access control and the reasons for creating the hierarchy and placing the published objects will be addressed.

Introduction

• Abstracting physical resources

• Naming contexts

• The Global Catalog

• Searching and ambiguous name resolution

• Programmatic access (ADSI & LDAP)

• RootDSE

• Global Catalog dependencies

• 2003 universal group membership caching

• Active Directory^® versioning

An in-depth examination of objects, their attributes, and the schema. It will address the main attribute types including: OIDs, GUIDs, SIDs, display names, mandatory attributes, indexed attributes, linked attributes and much more.

Anatomy of an Object

• Key attributes

• Indexed attributes

• Linked attributes and cross-references

• Phantom records

• Infrastructure Master

• Multi-valued attributes

• Classes

• Extending the schema

• Attribute settings via Schema Manager

• LDP and ADSI Edit

• 2003 schema changes

• Bulk import and export (LDIF & CSVDE)

Provides details of the data storage architecture and how the DSA works in combination with the database layer and ESE. Details of database maintenance are covered including tombstones and garbage collection.

Data storage

• Object storage

• Database and log files

• Tombstones and garbage collection

• Creating the Active Directory^®

Introduces AD replication and then drills-down into the object and attribute metadata.

Replication

• Multi-master replication

• Resolving conflicts

• 2003 linked-value replication

• DCPROMO replication

• 2003 install from media

• 2003 Active Directory^® partitions

Protection of objects through access control lists is essential; different access control permissions may be required as the object is created, located and maintained. This section examines access control for object access and delegated administration.

Gaining Access to Published Objects

• Explicit and inherited ACLs

• ACE ordering

• Non-canonical ACLs

• Default object ACLs

• OU access and inheritance

• Delegating administration

• 2003 changes

A number of administration tasks can only be performed by the domain or enterprise administrators. This section details how some of the tasks can be delegated through direct manipulation of ACLs on objects.

Advanced Administration

• Default access for security groups

• Delegating tasks

• Identifying affected objects

• Solving hard delegation problems