Managing Active Directory in Windows Server 2012

This article will go over deployment and administration of Windows Server 2012 Active Directory. Please keep in mind that this is a beginner tutorial and does not intend to go in-depth. Active Directory is a heart of any windows infrastructure and we must be able to manage it effectively and efficiently. We will go over new features that is added to server 2012 icluding AD Recycle bin, FineGrain pwd policy and remote deployment features.

If you are in IT, you understand that it's a most important piece of your windows infrastructure. Windows Server 2012 allows for more streamlined deployment for Active Directory, also known as DC promotion. Windows Server 2012 allows for on premises domain controllers and cloud deployment of domain controllers. This is a game changer since we never imagined having domain controllers in the cloud. Since new dcpromo is based on powershell, you can easily script the process end to end. Another surprising feature of Windows Server 2012 is the ability to clone domain controllers and this is fully supported by Microsoft. Running the domain controller promotion will automatically generate commands so you can reuse it later on. Windows Server 2012 simplifies domain promotion process by aggregating all the steps which can be configured from one interface. Virtualizing domain controllers with Windows Server 2012 is very interesting. Virtual machine GenerationID is used by virtual domain controller to keep track of changes. As of now, only Hyper-V is compatible with GenerationID.

To deploy Active Directory, simply, add the "Active Directory Domain Services" role.

Active Directory management console is no longer a silo tool such as ADUC—Active Directory Users and Computers since windows 2000 days. This functionality is now fully integrated to the ServerManager console. Addition to integrated management, heath of AD DS services can be viewed by using the builtin Dashboard. This allows for centralized management and monitoring of Active Directory from a single console.

AD RecycleBin is not a new concept to Server 2012 Active Directory. This feature has been around for longtime and a lot of thirdparty software use this feature to restore AD objects. However, Server 2012 introduces Powershell cmdlets and GUI based tools to allow for restoration of AD objects. This eliminates the need for third party software or performing painful Active Directory restore mode restore procedure.

Powershell history for Active Directory actions performed is one of the best features of Server 2012. This allows auditing of user accounts created by admins in organized graphical manner. Also, all the tasked perform via the GUI can be viewed from Powershell history viewer.