Posted: August 11th, 2022

Active Directory Management

Active Directory Management
Please answer the following questions with approx 1 page each:

1. You are a new administrator with the Contoso Corporation. You discover that you have one forest with five domains. Currently, you have 5,000 users spread out between 10 cities throughout the United States. How would you determine the best way to organize your forest/domains?

2. You are an administrator for the Contoso Corporation. Your corporation just purchased the Adatum Corporation. Both domains are running at the Windows Server 2012 R2 functional level. You want to combine the two domains into one. How would you proceed?

Active Directory Management
Question one
Determining the arrangement of domains
The arrangement and positions of directory domains is a vital element to determine to ensure that different users, devices, and computers have access to the network (Stewart, 2016). A collection of domains make a tree and a collection of trees make forests that must be effectively and efficiently be covered under a network or an active directory database. In this regard, different factors and regulations need to be considered and incorporated in the arrangement of the domains.
The arrangement of domains needs to be based on the speed of the links connected to them. In this case, the slowest link determines the maximum number of users it can handle if it can accommodate replication between the existing bandwidth and domain controllers (Stewart, 2016). This factor ensures that even the slowest link has the right number of domains for the offering of Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS). Therefore, the speed of a link will determine the maximum number of the users that the domain will have in a single domain forest.
The percentage of the bandwidth to be reserved for replication will determine the arrangement of domains for the 5000 users. As the number of users increases the higher or stronger, the bandwidth is required to ensure that the users’ network needs are effectively covered (Stewart, 2016). Therefore, the Active Directory designer needs to consider the number of users versus the bandwidth strength to determine the effective arrangement.
Additionally, the arrangement of the domains/forests is greatly determined by the existing network and regions that make sense to the organization. The creation of the regions for the different users will be dependent on the availability of the network as well as the type of network available (Stewart, 2016). This fact can make the users to be divided based on factors such as geographical boundaries such as continental boundaries. These factors will have an impact on the arrangement of domains for the 5000 users.
Question two
Combining two domains into one
In the case of Contoso Corporation and Adatum Corporation combining will mean that their two different domains will have to be combined with being distributed from a single entity. In this regard, there are three distinct steps that will be followed in the consolidation of domains active directory. The first step includes the integration of directories (Taskila, 2015). This step begins with the syncing of the separate directories to enhance the merging of directories. The second part is the setting up of a trust to ensure that both the environments contain two sets of objects going forward. The last part is the updating of policies to achieve uniformity.
The second step entails the building of a new active directory environment. In this regard, the organization creates a proper directory structure that can work for the two organizations (Taskila, 2015). This approach ensures that the needs of both organizations are satisfied and that new requirements are sufficiently met. In this regard, meeting the needs and new requirements ensures that the bigger goals of the organizations are met.
Finally, the organizations are set to migrate from the old to the new active directory. This process is achieved through designing and deploying new structure then syncs it with the legacy directories to commence the migration (Taskila, 2015). In this case, the following steps are followed, syncing the old and the new, choosing the cut-off point, moving the necessary data, and retiring the legacy directories.

References
Stewart, K. H. (2016). Ferromagnetic domains. Cambridge University Press.
Taskila, K. (2015). Documentation of Active Directory Migration.

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Tags: Computer Sciences and Information Technology Topic: Active Directory Management