So far, we have the domain & forest set up. I’ve already configured an OMS workspace, and added the VMs to it. We’ve cranked up the auditing via GPO after setting all the time correctly, now lets get some alerts going on to let us know something nasty might be going on. To access (and […]

When we set up our domain controllers, we installed the DNS role. DNS is key to how Active Directory works. It is possible to move DNS on to dedicated servers, however it’s common place to leave DNS on the Domain Controllers. Client machines will all have to use DNS servers that relate to the domain […]

First of all, I would like to point you at my GitHub repository. The GPOs I create as part of this blog will be backed up and uploaded to the following repository: https://github.com/1800Zeta/ActiveDirectory Feel free to download from here and then import the settings. OK, so I’ve got the two DC’s provisioned and a management […]

In Active Directory, time is extremely important. Active Directory is a multi-master system with each writable domain controller able to make changes to the directory. There are however 5 Operations Master roles that are responsible for performing tasks that are not suitable for multiple masters. In this post we are going to focus on the PDC […]

In my next post, I will talk about setting up our first GPO to configure an authorative time source in Active Directory. Before I do though, I will set up a central store for the group policy template files (ADMX files). First of all, download the latest ADMX files from the following URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53430 When […]

Your first choice will be how you want to provision your domain controllers. Your choices include purchasing physical servers, using a hypervisor such as VMware ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V, or going cloud and using Azure or AWS. As discussed in an earlier post, I have a full home lab which uses Microsoft Hyper-V. I am […]