Hi All,

This blog is for those who are new but not for who knew Active Directory :)

I have focused this blog mainly for Junior System Admins, IT Technicians. I have tried to write this blog in a fashion which came into my mind when I was in the same stage. Of course you too being a geek can go through it and add your valuable comments.

The 'NO - HOW' and 'MAY BE INTERESTING' section of Directory Service:

How the hell Directory Service came into picture which requires so much attention specially @interviews?

The first Directory Service that came into the picture has now become a medieval as per the current IT but still running successfully and is the backbone between your and my system. This was invented by Dr. Paul V. Mockapetris in 1983. Can you guess about the same? No, okay fine let me give some more hints. The original specifications appeared in RFC 882 and RFC 883 which were superseded later by RFC 1034 and RFC 1035.

It is the God Father of all Directory Services -DNS. Yes DNS (Domain Naming System) is the first Directory Services on the internet. Probably this is the reason many of the young system admins find AD to be easier than DNS :) Few next like Hesiod, Yellow Pages from Sun, Banyan VINES were the successor of DNS. With the invent of X.500 and LDAP new generations of Directory Services came into the picture but the Novell Directory Services (NDS, now known as eDirectory) and Active Directory Services were the biggest hit.

2nd Question we say AD, ADS Active Directory but what actually is Directory, Directory Service and Active Directory?

This has been always a pain for me during my days of Junior Admin that what actually is AD? Some people say that it is a hierarchy some say database..but I found difficulties for visualizing it in my mind. So, let me try for those who still have a confusion and to understand the same I have broken the section into some granular parts:

1) What is Database?
Ans: It is simply a listing or collection of objects which are organized.

2) What is Directory?
Ans: It is nothing but a special type of database.

3) What is Directory Service?
Ans: A directory service is a collection of the hardware, software, process, policies and other things which are responsible for making the information in the directory available to it's objects.

4) What is Active Directory?
Ans: The Directory Service for Microsoft is known as Active Directory and the total ensemble is called as Active Directory Services.

Yes, indeed it is nothing but a database which is actually in a hierarchical fashion. And the information flows from top to bottom. I will update about the same in some more details on next session.

So, by now at least we are clear about the 'Adam & Eve' of Active Directory.