Active Directory: Advanced AD DS infrastructure management

Explore deploying and upgrading active directory domain services in complex environments, covering domain and forest functional levels, migrations to Windows Server 2016/2019, and dns name resolution optimization.

Examine the spectrum of Active Directory domain functional levels from Windows 2000 native to Windows 2016, and evaluate upgrade benefits, features, and rollback limitations.

Explore how domain functional levels unlock features in AD DS, including protected users and authentication policies. Learn planning for upgrades, rollbacks, and modern authentication across the domain.

Plan and execute AD DS domain functional level upgrades by migrating SysVol replication from FRS to DFRS before upgrade, understanding rollback limits, and evaluating 32K database pages at 2025 level.

AD DS forest functional levels govern features and limit adding domains; raising the level enables forest trusts, linked value replication, and 2008 r2 Active Directory Recycle Bin with RSAT.

Explore deploying new AD DS domains within a forest, including forest root domain roles like schema master and domain naming master, and options for child domains or three-domain deployments.

Explore DNS considerations for complex AD DS environments, from centralized or decentralized models to conditional forwarding, stub zones, DNS devolution, and UPN suffixes for sign-in and federation.

Demonstrates installing Active Directory Domain Services binaries and promoting a server to a domain controller for a new domain in an existing forest, using the AD DS configuration wizard.

Upgrade Active Directory to Windows Server 2016 by upgrading the existing domain controller OS or adding a new 2016 domain controller and performing adprep schema upgrades.

Learn to migrate to Windows Server 2016 AD DS using the Active Directory Migration Tool, covering pre-migration steps, inter forest restructuring, account and resource migration, and seed history management.

Learn how to configure forest trusts in active directory, handle prerequisites like name resolution and forest functional level prerequisites, and apply selective authentication to control cross-forest access.

Examine parent and child, tree root, external, forest complete or selective, and shortcut trusts. Understand transitive and non-transitive directions, including one- and two-way paths.

Explore how trusts in an Active Directory forest enable cross-domain resource access via transitive and shortcut trusts, with domain controllers issuing session tickets to resources.

Explore how forest trusts connect Active Directory forests, enabling cross-forest authentication with forest-wide or selective, one-way or two-way, and transitive domain access.

Configure advanced AD DS trust settings to control access across forests and domains using seed filtering, selective authentication, and name suffix routing, with domain and forest wide authentication options.

Create an Azure account, explore the Azure portal, and launch Cloud Shell to run PowerShell or Bash commands, using a free one-year subscription for hands-on labs.

Explore the Azure portal home page to manage resources, customize dashboards with widgets, and use favorites, subscriptions, resource groups, and cloud shell for efficient cloud administration.

Create a resource group in the Azure portal, assign a subscription, region, and tags, and explore resource management, all resources view, and Cloud Shell usage for organized lab environments.

Learn to create, manage, and delete Azure resource groups and storage accounts via the Azure Portal and Cloud Shell, following naming rules, dependency handling, and automation best practices.

Discover Azure's free subscription for new customers, offering 12 months of compute, storage, and container services like virtual machines, storage accounts, and AKS, plus 200 credits for 30 days.

Explore Azure subscription types—free, pay-as-you-go, enterprise agreement, and cloud service provider—and learn effective management using RBAC, budgets, and governance across environments and departments.

Use resource groups as logical containers to organize related Azure resources by lifecycle, environment, department, or application, enabling efficient management with naming, tagging, and RBAC.

Explore how Azure regions, region pairs, and availability zones influence latency, data residency, and compliance, and compare pricing across regions to optimize vm sizes and disaster recovery.

Explore how Azure Availability Zones deliver high availability and fault tolerance by distributing resources across three physically separate data centers with zone pinned and zone redundant services.

Explore the Azure all services page to browse hundreds of categorized services, search and filter by category, deploy and manage resources, and access docs, pricing, and updates for cloud insights.

Learn to set up a budget in Azure to control subscription costs using cost management, alerts, and forecasts.

Clone the Azure Learning Lessons repository in Azure Cloud Shell and run PowerShell scripts to create or remove VMs. Use Codespaces for online VS Code editing and committing changes.

Build a single vm in Azure with PowerShell automation and GitHub version control, provisioning a virtual network, network security group, public IP, and vm, then teardown for full cycle automation.

Master Azure resource management with PowerShell by using Cloud Shell to list and delete resource groups, inspect resources, and script virtual machine deployments across regions with the Az module.

demonstrates building an azure vm using a powershell script, defining resource group, location, secure password, public ip, vnet, and nic, to automate basic ad ds infrastructure setup.

Use PowerShell to create an Azure NSG rule for RDP, attach it to the NIC, and deploy a Windows VM with credentials.

Create an Azure VM with a PowerShell script, configure operating system image and edition, attach a network interface, disable boot diagnostics, and output VM details and public IP for RDP.

Learn how to create Azure virtual machines with a PowerShell script, enforce a 15-character naming rule, and build labs by provisioning multiple VMs in one run via a GitHub repo.

Create a resource removal script in GitHub code using PowerShell. Define resource group, VM, and VNet variables; remove VM, NIC, PIP, NSG, VNet, and the resource group with force.

Execute a resource removal script in Azure Cloud Shell to delete a resource group and its resources, using git pull updates and a script from a remote repository.

Deploy a multi-region azure lab with PowerShell: create resource groups, vnets, and six Windows Server 2022 Datacenter VMs in UK West, East US, and Central India; automate with scripts.

Demonstrates cleaning up a multi-region Azure lab by running a PowerShell script to remove Windows Server 2022 virtual machines, NICs, public IPs, NSGs, VNets, and resource groups in dependency order.

Explore azure bastion to securely access windows vms in the azure portal using tls over 443, eliminating public ips and centralizing rdp access.

Build a six-VM AD DS lab region-wide, set static IPs, install AD DS role, and promote a forest root domain controller using the graphical user interface on Windows Server 2022.

Configure a static ipv4 address on an azure domain controller, set 10.0.0.4 with gateway 10.0.0.1 and dns 127.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.5, then promote to a domain controller for learn it lessons.com.

Troubleshoot network connectivity by configuring a static IP on a domain controller with PowerShell. Use new-netipaddress with 10.0.0.5/24, gateway 10.0.0.1, and DNS 10.0.0.5 and 10.0.0.4.

Troubleshoot AD DS network connectivity by removing the existing IP configuration with remove-netipaddress on the Ethernet interface. Reconfigure IP and DNS with set-netipaddress, set-dnsclientserveraddress, and verify using ipconfig.

Configure a static internal IP for a second domain controller in Azure using Azure PowerShell and Azure Shell; set the network interface to static and restart the VM.

Troubleshoot vm connectivity using the azure portal to view and adjust network interfaces and ip configurations. Attach or detach nics, assign static public ips, deallocate resources, and verify rdp access.

Configure VNet peering between central india and uk west to establish connectivity for the root domain controller. Install AD DS and promote a child domain moom.learned lessons.com under learned lessons.com.

Promote a secondary domain controller for the subdomain, configure DNS and IP settings, and demonstrate a three-location AD DS deployment with a root domain and two subdomains.

Verify and configure dns settings across a multi-region active directory deployment by managing dns zones, forwarders to azure dns, and delegations for ams and moon subdomains, with PowerShell tests.

Verify and configure DNS settings across multi-site environments by creating delegations, managing forwarders, and validating zone properties and VNet peering in a lab.

Configure active directory sites for a multi-region lab, creating UK west, west europe, and central India sites; set 15-minute replication, add subnets, and assign domain controllers via GUI and PowerShell.

Configure Active Directory sites and subnets for multi-region deployments, manage replication with site links and frequency, and assign domain controllers to correct sites via GUI and PowerShell.