Microsoft Active Directory

Microsoft Windows Active Directory is the service installed in a Domain's main server machine and it is the responsible for managing all the activity that can take place within the domain and the computers associated with it. There are many Active Directory tools that can be used to transform a simple group of individual computers into a cohesive group of machines that work under specific limitations and privileges.

Active Directory Users and Computers all start to work in a cohesive group, that is to say, they follow the security policies imposed by the Domain Controller and all users are interconnected. They can share the same resources under the protection that only users with a User-name and password combination can gain access to the system. This is all defined in the Active Directory Schema, as it contains definitions of every single object in the Active Directory content and provides brief explanations and attributes of these objects as well for ease of use.

Microsoft Active Directory Exchange extension is also an included tool on the package, allowing the network administrator to imbue a email Exchange server, so that the network users can swap mails between themselves or even to the outside, while using the local server as the mail server, as opposed to an exterior mail server. This allows for greater safety when trying to communicate within the intra net as the information never really leaves the local area network. The administrator can however grant access for emails to be sent outside and received from the outside to the server, but the emails sent within local users will never be seen by outside eyes.

The success of this mechanism relies on Microsoft Active Directory LDAP, which is the protocol that allows Active Directory to run so smoothly. LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, and it's the system that controls the flow of traffic from user computers to the server and is as well responsible for the control when you have more than one server machine acting as Domain Controller. It is a very powerful addition in the system that has been refined along time and is compatible with the LDAPv3 standards set by Microsoft.

There's also the Microsoft Active Directory Connector, or ADC for short, which is a tool intended for Active Directory replication. It can gather data from the A.D., Exchange server and the LDAP, along with the files pertaining to the logs of all actions registered. Of course, as the name implies, the Connector's true function is to aggregate all this data (from multiple sources) and connect them into one single Active Directory Domain where all the information is handled and processed.

In case you are in search for a Microsoft Active Directory tutorial, you can use the included Active Directory help for most cases since it's in-depth enough to cover a wide array of cases. In alternative, you may get some Microsoft Active Directory training at a local school that is providing IT courses, since many offer courses on Windows Server technology which is what you'd be looking for in this case.