Using AD DS to organize your network

There is not a single tool that is used to manage all facets of Active Directory. Since it is such an expansive technology, our configuration of the directory is spread across a number of different management consoles. Let's take a look at each of them, and a couple of the most common tasks that you will be performing inside these tools. Any of these management consoles can be launched from any of your domain controller servers, and just like we looked at in a previous chapter, the easiest way to launch these consoles are right from the Tools menu in the upper-right corner of Server Manager.

Active Directory Users and Computers

I'll start with the tool that is alphabetically last in the list of our Active Directory tools, because this is by far the one which the everyday server administrator will use most often. AD Users and Computers is the console from which all of the user accounts and computer accounts are created and managed. Open it up...