Windows Server and higher versions simplify the deployment process by leveraging Server Manager instead of the deprecated DCPromo utility. After installing the basic AD domain services, you will immediately be prompted to take additional steps if you require the server a VM to become a domain controller. See Figure 3. Figure 3: Server Manager Feature Wizard. Once you go through the remaining steps, you will end-up with a secure and functional RODC! RODCs can be a great addition to an infrastructure to solve perimeter security concerns, while also adding functionality and mitigating risk.
Pairing secure local protection policies with functionality that RODCs provide will ensure that an environment runs at the highest availability levels, with security every day, days a year. In Part 3, my next blogpost, I will discuss individual domain controller protection, individual object restoration and testing of your DC backups!
Email Address:. First Name:. Last Name:. Part 2. Enabling this policy would help in avoiding the replication of a lingering object between Domain Controllers. If a Domain Controller is powered down for a long time especially beyond its tombstone lifetime , then do not power it on at all.
I have published an article on this topic, where I have published a generic checklist on cleanup tasks. However, if the Domain Controller system time is inaccurate and differs significantly from its partners, then other Domain Controllers might choose not to participate with this DC for replication.
So please ensure that your Domain Controllers maintain accurate time on their system clock. We will discuss on time sync in detail in an upcoming section. Active Directory Domain Controllers act as a time source for all member servers and workstations which are members of AD Domain.
Therefore, it is important that the Domain Controllers maintain correct system time. I have published an article on AD Time Sync, which you can refer here. We will now discuss a few best practices related to Time Sync :. Refer this Link for the configuration steps. If PDC emulator time is not correct, that will impact all other Domain Controllers, which will, in turn, impact all other systems. You have to run this report for each domain. This report would display the time skew difference between domain controllers, which should be less than 1 second.
You can integrate the report with a scheduled task, and monitor the result for each domain. We will discuss two types of AD backups, object level and service level database level. The above two settings are enough for the object level backup plan. However, in case AD Database becomes corrupted and goes beyond recovery, object level backup will not be useful. So we should have a solid backup policy for the Active Directory Backup.
Before we proceed, it is important to keep below points in mind:. For a single Domain Controller failure, the recommended option is to demote the Domain Controller, wait for a few hours to replicate the demotion, and then promote it back again. Do not restore Active Directory backup to recover deleted objects. We have already discussed AD Recycle Bin which should be used for object level backup and recovery.
I have published an article on AD Backup, and I strongly encourage to refer to that. In that article, I have demonstrated how can you create an effective backup policy for your domains, and how can you automate the daily backup. Due to some business need, if we want to establish a bridge between two AD Forests, we need to configure Forest Trust between those forests.
However, you have to be very careful while configuring the Forest Trust, as it will open the security boundary before another AD Forest, which might belong to a different organization or entity. I have published an article which captures some attention points, which should be considered while creating a Forest Trust. I strongly recommend to refer to that article, where you can find a checklist and action plan for creating Forest Trust. To configure trust between two domains in two different forests, you can consider External Trust.
You can refer to the article which I previously mentioned to get the checklist. The most common reason for SID Filtering to allow users to access resources in an old forest, who's AD accounts have been migrated to a new forest. In such cases, please take business and security approval to disable SID filtering for a temporary basis until the migration is over. Please note that disabling SID filtering is a security risk.
If there is no matching site, authentication request will go to any Domain Controller at Trusted Forest. This will create multiple problems, and you cannot decide on which Domain Controllers firewall ports need to be opened for Forest Trust. In my article about Forest Trust , I have discussed this feature elaborately. One of the reasons behind Active Directory's wide adaptation is its ability to control the IT environment through Group Policy. Using Group Policy, administrators can control thousands of users and systems the way they want.
When we configure a GPO, we need to consider two things, what and where. This means, what the policy is all about and where it will be applied, and where it will not be applied. Once we finalize a GPO, we need to plan for its deployment.
Here are a few thumb rules :. Do not link it to an OU which is having thousands of users or computers. First link it with a smaller OU or sub OU having fewer users or computers, to minimize any possible impact. I have published an article called Group Policy : Filtering and Permission , which you can refer to understand how can we fine-tune the target of Group Policy.
You can use some script to automate that. So you should follow that approach rather than creating multiple GPOs for the same purpose. So far, we have discussed some best practices related to Active Directory design. Let's discuss some of the best practices related to DNS. I assume that all zones in your environment are AD Integrated.
This will ensure that the records within that zone would only be updated by trusted entities. Changing this settings later would impact record permission and can cause outage, so please make the zone "Secure Only" as soon as it is created. A zone can be replicated within Domain or throughout an AD Forest. If a given zone is mostly used only by a single domain, there is no need to replicate it to the entire forest, as that would increase replication traffic. It is not necessary to have a separate reverse lookup zone against every forward lookup zone, you can combine few forward lookup zones with a bigger reverse lookup zone.
It is difficult to manage static DNS records, and over the time it will become a huge burden for DNS Administrators to identify and cleanup stale static records. This is by design, and no action is required on that. However, please plan this carefully to ensure that it would not delete live records. Please check your DHCP lease duration for corresponding scopes, which configuring ageing. However, as a DNS Administrators, you would like to control the traffic and can change this default behavior.
It is not necessary that every DNS server should directly talk to root servers for external name resolution. Typically, you can choose few DNS servers in your root domain to do this job. External DNS Zones. In addition to internal DNS servers, most of the organizations also need to host few zone externally, to make the zone and corresponding records available globally. These service providers host the zones in their environment and provides a management console to organizations, from where DNS Administrator manages those external zones and records.
Privacy policy. Removing default members from this group can create a security vulnerability. They are designed to provide some read-only domain controller functionality in environments that may be less physically secure than centralized IT departments or data centers, such as branch offices. The read-only nature of the RODC provides some functionality to local users while providing some protection from local security breaches to the broader corporate infrastructure.
The updates are then replicated back to the RODC. RODCs are typically configured to allow certain user accounts typically branch office staff to authenticate locally, even if the WAN link to the central IT infrastructure is offline.
To do this, the RODC needs to cache passwords for those users locally. By default, this group contains the following highly-privileged users and groups:. Note: Domain controllers use a key derived from the password of the krbtgt account the key distribution service account to encrypt Kerberos Ticket-Granting Tickets TGTs.
0コメント