Active Directory Diagram

This AD diagram example was redesigned from the picture "Site links" from the book "Active Directory for Dummies".
"Site links represent the Active Directory replication paths between sites.
These paths are manually defined so that the designer has control over which network links the replication traffic occurs on. These site links also control how clients are directed to domain controllers when there’s no DC in the client’s local site. Each site link has the following attributes:
(1) Connected sites: A site link is defined by the sites to which it connects. A site link can connect two or more sites together.
(2) Network transport: Site links support replication communication over IP-based RPCs or with the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). You normally want to use RPC whenever possible, but you can use SMTP when the sites you’re linking don’t support RPC.
(3) Cost: Each site link has a cost associated with it. Costs are used to assign preferences to links that determine which link should be followed when multiple link paths are available between sites. The cost represents what it “costs” to use this site link relative to the other site links and affects replication traffic as well as how users are assigned a domain controller. Links with lower cost values have preference over links with higher cost values. Cost values range from 1–32,767; the default being 100.
(4) Frequency: The frequency value defines how often a replication occurs
when using this site link (the replication latency). You can configure the time between replications from a minimum of 15 minutes to a maximum of 10,080 minutes (one week). The default frequency is 180 minutes.
(5) Schedule: The schedule dictates when this link is active and available for replication between the sites. The schedule can also control which days of the week the link is available. Normally, the schedule is set so that the link is available 24 hours a day, but you can set up different schedules on a per-day-of-the-week basis.
By creating a site link, you enable two or more sites to be connected and to share the same site link attributes (transport, cost, frequency, and schedule). By default, site links create transitive connectivity between sites.
If you create a site link between sites A and B and another site link between
sites B and C, an automatic connection (known as a site link bridge) is created between sites A and C..." [Steve Clines and Marcia Loughry, Active Directory® For Dummies®, 2nd Edition. 2008]
The Active Directory diagram example "Site links" was created using the ConceptDraw PRO diagramming and vector drawing software extended with the Active Directory Diagrams solution from the Computer and Networks area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.

This AD diagram example was created based on the picture "AD LDS as a phone book service" from the book "Active Directory for Dummies".
"Directory services are a great way of providing information that can be fre-
quently retrieved and searched on in a hierarchical way. ... Well, there’s no reason that you can’t create a directory service that’s actually a phone book. Imagine that you need to make a searchable phone directory of your organization available on the Internet. ... This isn’t a difficult task, but it has security repercussions. If you’ve already deployed AD DS and you have the employees’ phone numbers available in that directory, it might not be a good idea to expose your AD DS environment to the Internet for security reasons. Using AD LDS is a great alternative because it can be deployed separately from AD DS and it’s designed to simply provide the information retrieval service that you need without the complications involved with Kerberos authentication and group policies." [Steve Clines and Marcia Loughry, Active Directory® For Dummies®, 2nd Edition. 2008]
The Active Directory diagram example "AD LDS as a phone book service" was created using the ConceptDraw PRO diagramming and vector drawing software extended with the Active Directory Diagrams solution from the Computer and Networks area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.

"Microsoft Windows 2000 Server introduces Active Directory to replace domain functionality. Active Directory will continue to get the job done, but in a much more efficient way. Active Directory can be replicated between multiple domain controllers, so no single system is critical. In this way, the crucial data stored within Active Directory is both redundant and load-balanced.
A directory, in the most generic sense, is a comprehensive listing of objects. A phone book is a type of directory that stores information about people, businesses, and government organizations. Phone books typically record names, addresses, and phone numbers. Active Directory is similar to a phone book in several ways, and it is far more flexible. Active Directory will store information about organizations, sites, systems, users, shares, and just about any other network object that you can imagine. Not all objects are as similar to each other as those stored in the phone book, so Active Directory includes the ability to record different types of information about different objects." [technet.microsoft.com/ en-us/ library/ bb742424.aspx]
The AD diagram example "Active Directory structure diagram" was created using the ConceptDraw PRO diagramming and vector drawing software extended with the Active Directory Diagrams solution from the Computer and Networks area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.

This example was drawn on the base of the Figure 2 illustrating the "Active Directory FAQ" from the website "Information Management Systems & Services" (IMSS) of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) campus. [imss.caltech.edu/ node/ 412]
"By using the Active Directory® Domain Services (AD DS) server role, you can create a scalable, secure, and manageable infrastructure for user and resource management, and you can provide support for directory-enabled applications, such as Microsoft® Exchange Server. ...
AD DS provides a distributed database that stores and manages information about network resources and application-specific data from directory-enabled applications. Administrators can use AD DS to organize elements of a network, such as users, computers, and other devices, into a hierarchical containment structure. The hierarchical containment structure includes the Active Directory forest, domains in the forest, and organizational units (OUs) in each domain. A server that is running AD DS is called a domain controller." [technet.microsoft.com/ en-us/ library/ 9a5cba91-7153-4265-adda-c70df2321982]
The Active Directory Domain Services diagram example was created using the ConceptDraw PRO diagramming and vector drawing software extended with the Active Directory Diagrams solution from the Computer and Networks area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.

This AD diagram example was redesigned from the picture "Asymmetric
encryption" from the book "Active Directory for Dummies".
"Asymmetric Encryption:
This scenario uses a public and private key pair that is associated with each other. With this type of encryption, one of the keys is used to encrypt the data in such a way that only the corresponding second key is capable of decrypting the information. ...
In asymmetric encryption, two different keys are involved in the process: one for encrypting the document and a different but related key for decrypting the document. The two keys are generated at the same time so that if a document is encrypted with one of the keys, only the second related key can decrypt the document. ... Typically, these keys are referred to as a private key and a public key. A private key is one that is generated for a particular user and is never shared with any other user or computer. A public key is typically one of the pieces of data that’s stored in a PKI certificate. Although this type of encryption creates a very secure way of sharing data, an added benefit is you knowing that a piece of data decrypted by using a particular user’s public key must have come from that user because no other user would have the private key the document was encrypted with."
[Steve Clines and Marcia Loughry, Active Directory® For Dummies®, 2nd Edition. 2008]
The Active Directory diagram example "Asymmetric encryption" was created using the ConceptDraw PRO diagramming and vector drawing software extended with the Active Directory Diagrams solution from the Computer and Networks area of ConceptDraw Solution Park.