Active Directory - What’s in a Name?

With the release of Windows Server 2008 and the inclusion of several enhancements to AD, Microsoft has decided to realign all of its “identity” technologies under the Active Directory umbrella. Some items have simply been renamed; other technologies have been moved into the Active Directory Family. With all of these changes, and in typical Microsoft fashion, there are some new names to get familiar with. (These new technologies are discussed in subsequent subsections.)

• The Active Directory that we’ve all grown to know and love is now known as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). AD DS stores all information about resources on the network, such as users, computers, and other devices.

• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) is the latest version of Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM).

• Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) provides Web single sign-on (SSO) technologies to authenticate users to multiple web applications in a single session.

•Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) is an information-protection technology that works with RMS-enabled applications to protect and secure information from unauthorized use online and offline, inside and outside of the environment.

• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) allows the mapping of users and resources to a private key to help secure identity in a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) based environment.


Along with renaming and restructuring these technologies, Microsoft (MS) also updated all of the existing Active Directory technologies. Following are some of the major updates to Active Directory:

• Read -only domain controllers (RODCs) allow organizations to easily deploy a domain controller in locations where physical security cannot be guaranteed.

• Windows Server Core has introduced a new edition of Windows Server titled “Server Core”. Server Core is a Windows 2008 server that is command line–driven and does not possess a GUI.

Source of Information : Sybex Mastering Active Directory for Windows Server 2008