Question

Explain the functional use and implementation for a domain controller in an enterprise environment

Answer 1

Domain controller:-

Domain controller can be defined as a server computer that responds whenever a security authentication request is generated. All these processess take place within a domain.

we can say that the domain controller works for providing the services of domain and authentication for the internal web servers as well as data servers, also the internal users.

Functional use and the implementation of domain controller are the two different thing so, it must be considered separately.

Functional use of domain controller:-

A domain controller stores two things

a) a domain directory that contains the information about the domain where it is located

b)the configuration directory partitions and schema for the whole network.

Some domain controller can also stores more that one directory application partition.

The domain controller is mainly used for the two specialized functions. they are

1. Global catalog server:- every domain controller stores the domain’s object where it is intalled .a limited set of attributes is stored in the partial copy of the domain for each object which is not in the domain. Therefore a global catalog server stores

Its own full and writable copy
A partial replica
Read only replica of each and every domain in the network or say forest.

The global catalog allows clients to search AD and DS without having reference from server to server.

At first the domain controller is said to be forest that is automatically created by global catalogue server. And then only one can designate the other domain controllers to become global catalog servers if needed.

2. Operation Master:- the domain controllers that are having master roles operations are designed to perform specific task in order to ensure the consistency and also to it eliminates the potential whenever the conflict etries are made in an active directory database.

AD and DS defines the five master role’s operations

schema master
domain naming master
relative identifier (RID) master
primary domain controller (PDC) emulator
infrastructure master.

Implementation of domain controller:-

The domain controllers are implemented with the active directory . the implementation of domain controller is requires in any organization whether it is smaller or large. As a security is a basic and one of the most important factor to run any organization. And the domain controller is implemented so that any unauthorized access can be checked immediately.

In any organization there must be two domain controllers and better to run in virtual machines . The physical host must be different so, that the failure of single computer must not take the entire directory down.

The domain controller is also implemented for the security purpose of social sites and e-commerce sites.