Explore the Active Directory structure through the Users and Computers interface, including forest and domain structure, built-in admin groups, organizational units, and guidance on domain controller redundancy.

Explore active directory domain and trust concepts and create new two-way trusts with other domains, using the DC locator map and NetBIOS name.

Expand your Active Directory forest by adding a new child domain and promoting a server to a domain controller, while maintaining forest functional level at Windows Server 2025.

Explore the five FSMO roles in Active Directory, including forest-wide schema master and domain naming master, plus domain-wide infrastructure, read, and PDC emulator roles.

Explore Windows Server 2025 Active Directory enhancements, including a 32k database page size, DNS based discovery, NUMA awareness, replication priority boosts, and delegated managed service accounts (gMSA).

Explore Windows Server 2025 security enhancements, including LDAP and Kerberos improvements, TLS 1.3, SMB over QUIC, and default encryption and signing for Active Directory protection.

Discover Windows Server 2025's new Active Directory schema by viewing three new LDF files in the add prep folder under Windows System32 after upgrading the domain and forest functional level.

Windows Server 2025 switches to DNS-based domain controller discovery by default, and you can block NetBIOS discovery with a group policy; NetBIOS remains deprecated and less secure.

Create a new group policy object in windows server 2025 via group policy management, guided by active directory structure and organizational units to tailor desktop settings.

Identify the two main group policy types—computer configuration and user configuration—and learn to edit, link, and apply policies using the Group Policy Management Editor to a container and organizational unit.

Configure a group policy object to prohibit authenticated users from changing their default profile folder path, ensuring the documents, music, and downloads locations stay fixed and backed up by OneDrive.

Learn how group policies apply by creating registry keys in user or computer hives; a demo policy disables changing personal directories via Hkeycurrentuser, Windows Currentversion, and the explorer app.

Explore how group policy inheritance shapes domain and OU settings, including the default domain policy, the HQ NYC password policy, and block and enforced policies that govern contractors and FTE.

Explore how group policy processing relies on inheritance, scope, and link order to resolve policy precedence, with enforced policies at parent and domain levels shaping the effective settings.

Configure group policy filtering to target a subset of users or devices in an organizational unit using security groups or a WMI filter for Windows 10 and 11.

Examine domain-based group policy objects in the group policy management console, noting a forest named H+ port with the root domain H+port.local and the default domain and domain controller policies.

Configure domain-wide policies by creating or linking GPOs, or editing the default domain policy, and tailor security, password, auditing, and administrative template settings to match organizational needs.