Chapter 12. Managing domain controllers
Domain controllers are the most essential part of your Active Directory. Creating domain controllers was covered in detail in chapter 11, and this chapter shows how to manage them. It starts with discovering the domain controllers in your environment, and then covers testing their availability and the services they offer.
The chapter then moves on to global catalogs—the extra piece of domain controller functionality that enables you to access a subset of the attributes of every object in the forest in every domain. The global catalog is essential for the correct functioning of a multi-domain forest and Exchange email servers. After learning how to find global catalogs, you’ll see techniques for promoting domain controllers to be global catalogs (as well as demoting them).
In Active Directory all domain controllers are equal, but some roles (tasks) can only be performed by one domain controller at a time. These are the Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) roles. You need to know how to discover the FSMO role holders, what they do, and how to move the role between domain controllers. The chapter also includes a lab section.
First up—how to discover the domain controllers in your environment.
Do you know how many domain controllers you have in your domain? Or where they are? In this section you’ll learn how to find domain controllers, test that they’re available, and discover the services they offer.