Deploy and Manage Domain Controllers On‑Premises.
Now,
I mentioned in the aforementioned introduction course that the Windows Server
Hybrid Administrator Certification is not for beginners.
I would ask that you consult the Pluralsight library for remedial
training on Windows Server and Active Directory if that's your thing,
but I do want to cover a couple of key vocab terms just to make sure
we have a consistent vocabulary.
Active Directory Domain Services, or AD DS for short,
is a searchable, hierarchical directory for security principles. Users,
groups, computer accounts were using Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol, LDAP, which listens on TCP 389 by default, and this is the
main Windows Server directory service.
Now, by the end of this skill path,
you'll understand how AD DS on‑prem differs from Azure AD.
Don't make the mistake of thinking they're the same thing
because they're absolutely not.
They're both by Microsoft and they're both identity stores,
but that's where their similarity really ends. Within AD DS we have the
domain controller, which is a specialized Windows Server host that
stores an Active Directory Domain Services database, and through AD
replication makes that database available to other machines in your
network in a controlled manner.
The domain controller obviously is the identity linchpin of your Active
Directory implementation. Without a domain controller available, you're
not going to have any users or services being able to authenticate and
you've got a denial‑of‑service happening.
So you absolutely want redundancy in your domain controller network,
you want to protect those machines, and that's really part of the job tasks of the hybrid cloud Windows Server Administrator.