Active Directory Tutorial Interview Questions Free Downloads

Most of the Windows system administration job interviews definitely include many questions on Windows Active Directory Services. So the more you know about MS ADS the better.

What is Active Directory :

Active Directory is a new feature in Windows 2000/2003/2008 that allows users to logon and access resources from anywhere in the network. It allows administrators to manage the network from a single location and makes network security much easier to manage. Active Directory is really a database that stores information about all objects on the network. Think of Active Directory as a phone book for the network. For example, if you needed to find a resource on the network but you can't remember where it is located, you can do a search in Active Directory to find that resource. Resources include users, groups, computers, printers, and shared folders, to name a few. The Active Directory database is stored on Windows 2000/2003 servers known as Domain Controllers.There usually will be a Primary Domain Controller & Admins refer them in short as PDC.So usually in an interview they will ask you questions using such lingo as how did you install,configure your PDC. All of the domain controllers within a domain hold the same copy of the Active Directory database, in a file named NTDS.DIT. Windows 2000 domain controllers are multi-master replication partners, all replicating data back and forth to each other.

Installing Active Directory

1. Log on to the server installed with Windows 2000 or 2003 Server and open the run command. From the desktop click on Start > Run then type in DCPROMO in the run command and click OK.

2. This will begin the Active Directory installation wizard. The first screen to appear is the welcome screen, click on Next to continue. The next screen will ask you for the type of domain controller you would like to install. You have two options; one is to install this as the first domain controller ( or Primary Domain Controlelr) for a new domain or as an additional domain controller for an already existing domain. This is the first domain controller on the network, select Domain controller for a new domain and click Next.
 
3. The next screen will ask you to specify whether you want to create a new domain tree or create a new child domain in an existing domain tree. In Windows 2000 you can build domain trees so that the domains are in a hierarchy, for domains to be in a tree they must have a contiguous (continuous) namespace. The first domain in a tree is known as the root domain and any child domains in the tree will have to contain the name of the root domain. For example MYCOMPANY.COM may have a child domain for a Chicago office with the name of BRANCH.MYCOMPANY.COM and would be considered part of the domain tree because it has the contiguous namespace of the root domain,MYCOMPANY.COM . Remember, that this is the first domain controller on the network, so it will be the "root" domain of a new tree. Select Create a new domain tree and click Next.

4. The next screen asks you if you would like to create a new forest or join an existing forest. Windows 2000 lets you place the domain trees into forests, if there are any existing forests. Forests are used when you would like to combine two domain trees that have a non-contiguous namespace. For example MYCOMPANY.COM and HIGHSALARYSTORAGEJOBS.COM may not be placed in a domain tree together, because of the non-contiguous root domain names, but they may be a part of a forest that contains domain trees. You are creating the first and only tree with the storagejobsblogspot.com domain. Select Create a new forest of domain trees and click Next.

How to Migration from SCSI and Fibre Channel to IP storage And INFINIBAND

How to Migration from SCSI and Fibre Channel to IP storage And INFINIBAND

his investment for as long as possible. This means that he should first of all invest in technologies that solve today's problems. Second, he should invest in technologies that have a long life cycle ahead of them. Finally, he not only has to purchase hardware and software, but also train his staff appropriately and gather experience in production environments. For anyone who wishes to use storage networks today (2003) it is almost impossible to avoid Fibre Channel. IP storage may have a great deal of potential but there are only a few products on the market. Anyone implementing IP storage today will be forced to tie themselves to one manufacturer: it is unlikely that products from different manufacturers will be interoperable until the relevant standards have been passed and the cross-vendor interoperability of IP storage components has been tested. IP storage is therefore only suitable in exceptional cases or for pilot installations or as extension to an already existing Fibre Channel SAN. In environments where no databases are connected via storage networks, Network Attached Storage (NAS, Section 4.2.2) provides an alternative to Fibre Channel SAN. In the coming one to two years (2004 and 2005) Fibre Channel will remain the only alternative for storage networks with high performance requirements. During this period, in our estimate, numerous IP storage products will come onto the market that represent cheap and production-ready alternatives to Fibre Channel SAN for storage networks with low and medium performance requirements. For high performance requirements we will have to wait for appropriate iSCSI host bus adapters, which handle a large part of the protocol stack on the network card and thus free up the server CPU. For local storage networks, Fibre Channel is currently the right choice in almost all situations. It is the only technology for storage networks that is used very successfully on a large scale in production environments. The comprehensive use of IP storage, on the other hand, is imminent. Nevertheless, you can invest in Fibre Channel components today with an easy mind. They will still be able to be operated in a subsequent transition to IP storage, for example, using iSCSI-to-Fibre Channel gateways. Even today, despite the lack of a standard, FCIP is suitable for the connection of

two Fibre Channel SANs over a TCP/IP route. However, FCIP components from the same manufacturer must be used at both ends of the connection. Due to the teething troubles described, iSCSI is suitable as an expansion of existing FC-SANs for certain sub-requirements. Figure 3.43 shows a possible migration path from Fibre Channel SAN to IP storage. In the first stage, iSCSI-to-Fibre Channel gateways and FCIP-to-Fibre Channel gateways are required so that, for example, server connected via iSCSI can back up its data over the storage network onto a tape library connected via Fibre Channel. Currently (2003) it looks like a good idea to invest further in existing Fibre Channel infrastructure and to additionally try out iSCSI and the integration of iSCSI and Fibre Channel in pilot projects. After an extended period of usage in practice we can prove whether IP storage represents an alternative to Fibre Channel SAN and to what extent IP storage will establish itself alongside Fibre Channel. Only when it has been proven in practice that IP storage (iSCSI in Figure 3.42) also fulfils the highest performance requirements will IP storage possibly marginalize Fibre Channel over time.

INFINIBAND

In the near future, Fibre Channel and Ethernet will support transmission rates of 10 Gbit/s and above. Consequently, the host I/O bus in the computer must be able to transmit data at the same rate. However, like all parallel buses, the transmission rate of the PCI bus can only be increased to a limited degree (Section 3.3.2). InfiniBand represents an emerging I/O technology that will probably supersede the PCI bus in high-end servers. InfiniBand replaces the PCI bus with a serial network (Figure 3.44). In InfiniBand the devices communicate by means of messages, with an InfiniBand switch forwarding the data packets to the receiver in question. The communication is full duplex and a transmission rate of 2.5 Gbit/s in each direction is supported. If we take into account the fact that, like Fibre Channel, InfiniBand uses 8b/10b encoding, this yields a net data rate of 250 MByte/s per link and direction. InfiniBand makes it possible to bundle four

or twelve links so that a transmission rate of 10 Gbit/s (1 GByte/s net) or 30 Gbit/s (3GByte/s net) is achieved in each direction. It can be expected that nfiniBand will initially only be used in high-end servers and that the PCI bus will, for now, remain the choice for all other computers. As a medium, InfiniBand defines various copper and fiber-optic cables. A maximum length of 17 metres is specified for copper cable and up to 10,000 metres for fiber optic

cable. There are also plans to realize InfiniBand directly upon the circuit board using conductor tracks. The end points in an InfiniBand network are called channel adapters. InfiniBand differentiates between Host Channel Adapters (HCAs) and Target Channel Adapters (TCAs). HCAs bridge between the InfiniBand network and the system bus to which the CPUs and the main memory (RAM) are connected. TCAs make a connection between InfiniBand networks and peripheral devices that are connected via SCSI, Fibre Channel or Ethernet. In comparison to PCI, HCAs correspond with the PCI bridge chips and TCAs correspond with the Fibre Channel host bus adapter cards or the Ethernet network cards. InfiniBand has the potential to completely change the architecture of servers and storage

devices. We have to consider this: network cards and host bus adapter cards can be located100 metres apart. This means that mainboards with CPU and memory, network cards, host bus adapter cards and storage devices are all installed individually as physically separate, decoupled devices. These components are connected together over a network. Today it is still unclear which of the three transmission technologies will prevail in which area. Figure 3.45 shows what such an interconnection of CPU, memory, I/O cards and stor- age devices might look like. The computing power of the interconnection is provided by two CPU & RAM modules that are connected via a direct InfiniBand link for the benefit of lightweight interprocess communication. Peripheral devices are connected via

the InfiniBand network. In the example a tape library is connected via Fibre Channel and the disk subsystem is connected directly via InfiniBand. If the computing power of the interconnection is no longer sufficient a further CPU & RAM module can be added. Intelligent disk subsystems are becoming more and more powerful and Infini Band facilitates fast communication between servers and storage devices that reduces the load on the CPU. It is therefore at least theoretically feasible for sub functions such as the caching of file systems or the lock synchronization of shared disk file systems to be implemented directly on the disk subsystem or on special processors (Chapter 4). Right from the start, the InfiniBand protocol stack was designed so that it could be realized efficiently. A conscious decision was made only to specify performance features thatcould be implemented in the hardware. Nevertheless, the InfiniBand standard incorporates performance features such as flow control, zoning and various service classes. However, we assume that in InfiniBand – as in Fibre Channel – not all parts of the standard will be realized in the products.