New features of the Windows 2003 Active Directory

The Active Directory service provides a single sign-on capability and provides a centralized information repository for your entire network architecture, which greatly simplifies the management of users and computers and provides better access to network resources. This article gives us an overview of the advantages, new features, and improvements of the Windows Server 2003 Active Directory.

Benefits

Improvements to pass key policies in the Active Directory can benefit large and medium enterprises, as these improvements can improve the productivity of administrators and users. Based on the Windows2000 underlying extensions, Windows Server 2003 enhances the functionality, manageability, and reliability of the Active Directory. Organization users can benefit from sharing and managing different resources in the enterprise, reducing overhead and increasing efficiency.

Advantage	Describe
Stronger flexibility	The important new features introduced in the Active Directory ensure that it becomes one of the most flexible directory architectures in today's marketplace. As the application of directory integration becomes more common, organizations can use active catalogs to handle the most complex enterprise network environments. From an Internet Data center to an enterprise with a large number of branches, the improvements provided by Windows Server 2003 can greatly simplify management and improve performance and efficiency, making it a widely used solution.
Lower total cost of ownership	The active catalog has been enhanced by reducing the total cost of ownership and simplifying the internal workings of the enterprise. New features and improvements have been added to all products, adding functionality, simplifying management, and enhancing reliability.

New features and improvements

Windows Server 2003 has made many improvements to the Active Directory, making it more powerful, more reliable, and more economical. The Active Directory in Windows Server 2003 provides the following features:

Easier to deploy and manage

More secure

Improved performance and reliability

Easier to deploy and manage

Windows Server 2003 enhances the ability of administrators to effectively configure and manage active catalogs even in large organizations that contain multiple forests, domains, and sites. The improved migration and management tools, along with the ability to rename domains, make deployment activity directory tasks significantly simpler. Tools also provide a more humane drag, multiple object selection, and the ability to save and reuse queries. Group Policy has also been improved to enable it to be simpler and more effective in managing large numbers of users and computers in the Active Directory environment.

Advantage	Describe
ADMT version 2.0	With many improvements to the Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT), it is now easier to migrate to active directories. ADMT 2.0 now allows the migration of passwords from Windows nt®4.0 domains to Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 domains, or from Windows 2000 domains to Windows Server 2003 domains.
Renaming a domain	Supports changes to the DNS name and NetBIOS name of the domain in the current forest, and ensures that the forest remains "structurally sound". Administrators have greater flexibility in adjusting the structure after an Active Directory deployment. The original design can be modified to make it easier for an enterprise to change an existing directory structure in the event of a merger or reorganization.
Schema redefinition	The flexibility of the Active Directory has been enhanced to disable defined properties and classes in the Active Directory schema. In this way, properties and classes can be redefined when an error occurs in the initial definition.
Active Directory Application Mode (AD/AM)	Active Directory Application Mode (ad/am,active directory in application Mode) is a new feature of the Active Directory that focuses on a number of directory based application deployment issues. Ad/am is run as a non-operating system service and does not need to be deployed on a domain controller. Being a non-operating system service means that multiple instances of ad/am can be run concurrently on a single server, and each instance can be configured independently. Note: Ad/am will be launched as a stand-alone part of Windows Server 2003.
Improvement of Group Policy	Microsoft will launch a new Group Policy management tool with Windows Server 20,031 as a unified Group Policy management solution. Microsoft's Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) provides a tool for managing all Group Policy-related tasks. GPMC enables administrators to manage Group Policy in multiple sites or domains in a forest, all through a simplified user interface (UI) that supports drag-and-drop functionality. It includes new features such as backup, recovery, import, replication, and reporting for Active Directory objects (GPOs). These operations are fully scripted, enabling administrators to implement custom and automatic administration. These features also make Group Policy easier to use and help you manage your business more cost-effectively.
Enhanced User interface	As the main method of managing enterprise identity, object and relation, the improvement of management interface makes the efficiency and integration of management greatly improved. Microsoft's management Console (MMC) plugin now includes drag-and-drop capabilities, multiple object selection capabilities, and the ability to save and reuse queries. Administrators can now edit multiple user objects at the same time, reset the permission entries in the Access Control List (ACL) to their default values, display the valid permissions for a security principal, and indicate whether the object permissions are inherited from the parent object.