The Active Directory is the focal point for administration of Windows servers. The security system with ownership, auditing, permissions, inheritance and DACLs, applies consistently to the file system, the registry, the Active Directory, and to printers. The security system uses the same rules with all of these objects, but the permissions are different with different object types.

The file system has many features including, junction points, distributed link tracking, compression, encryption, client-side caching, dfs, and quotas. User profiles and policies provide a mechanism to control user environments.

There are a number of troubleshooting tools to manage the Active Directory. The schema, FMSO roles, sites, DNS, replication, garbage collection and fragmentation must be managed. Troubleshooting utilities include MMC, NTDSutil, RepAdmin, ReplMon,  NSlookup, and NTbackup.

Now that you understand the concepts of the Active Directory, you will be able to effectively perform administration tasks to manage resources and security.