Mastering Active Directory: Design, deploy, and protect Active Directory Domain Services for Windows Server 2022

I'm an IT guy but not an Active Directory SME. If it doesn't have a command line and doesn't route or switch I quickly fall off the cliff of interest in it. That being said, I needed to have a good starting guide and future reference guide to Active Directory so after some Google'ing I settled on this book. While I haven't read it cover to cover yet, I have used it to study up on a few specific areas of AD. It's also got a permanent spot near by work desk for use as a reference guide as needed.

This had info that helped our AD lockouts issues or at least ease the pain while our vendor figures it out. A powershell command that unlocks all AD users instead of having to unlock each one. In the troubleshooting section

I have been working with Active Directory since it was released in 2000 and even before that if you count its predecessor Exchange's directory. I can confidently say that this is the most comprehensive book on Active Directory that I have ever read. Of course there are all of the basics like designing AD structures, migrations to AD 2022, management of objects and group policies but then all of the AD services are also covered in-depth like DNS, DS, LDS, FS, RMS and CS. Furthermore this book tackles trusts, database maintenance and backup and recovery. While not a book about Azure AD, there is a ton of information about Azure AD. The author takes the time and effort to compare AD with Azure AD and there are hundreds of references to Azure AD in terms of building out hybrid AD environments, federated identity and notes about how things are done in Azure AD versus AD. The chapter on PowerShell demonstrates scripts for both AD and Azure AD. Here is what I think makes this book special though, and it is how the entire context for the book is around security, identity and access management. Essentially this book can be viewed as a book on security, identity and access management that demonstrates how to practically implement those concepts in Active Directory and Azure AD. There is fantastic information that explains the concepts of identity and access management clearly and concisely and covers topics such as zero trust, privileged access management (PAM) and more. Then, these concepts are translated into how they are implemented in Active Directory. It's a great way to present the information as it provides real world context and clearly explains the purpose of Active Directory versus purely just describing technical features and functionality. This is the way all technical books should be written.

Installing Active Directory is something "everyone" can do in 15 minutes by stepping through the wizard. Yet, doing this process correct and understanding it can take years. I think the author of this book has done a more thorough job than just rushing through the wizard. This book is massive - who'd have thought there was this much to say about this aging technology. (Aging as having been around for 20 years, not outdated in any means.) A lot of topics are covered at length and more extensively than the official docs from Microsoft. It's also refreshing when it is said in plain text that "there's basically nothing new in this specific area of AD" instead of the marketing speak about the latest release being the greatest ever. There's plenty of references here as well which is better than pulling numbers out of thin air, although even without digging into the results of survey I would be able to guess that attacks targeting identity are on the rise - it's possible we don't need all of them. But at the same time it doesn't hurt either. The chapters are mixed in the sense that some of them read more like reference material whereas other don't have concise instructions and instead provide more background type information. This means that if you just want the details of a specific task you might need to skip a paragraph of two to get to the steps you need. Note that even though features in Azure AD are mentioned these are not the focus of the book. Would have been nice to cover that as well, but at the length this is already it might be better to have a separate book for that. Personally I would have loved to see coverage of OAuth and OpenID Connect in the ADFS chapter, and with https being everywhere these days I'm sure the chapter about AD Certificate Services could have been more extensive as well. These are minor things though and not something that should scare you away. I felt fairly competent at AD going into this, but there were still new things for me and I used it to refresh other parts of my knowledge as well. In short - if you want to nerd out on Active Directory there should be something here for you!

Se vuoi imparare come funziona un sistema informatico Enterprise, questo fa al caso vostro

This is the perfect reference bible for AD

Le livre est très bien imprimé: c'est un signe de respect pour le consommateur. Je ne suis pas encore rendu bien loin dans la lecture mais, je peux dire qu'il suscite l'intérêt avec le contenu. Bravo à celui qui l'a écrit.

Nice book for Active Directory Administrator

Ein gutes Handbuch für Administratoren, ausführlich und hilfreich.