Implementation Plan for Active Directory - Essay Example

This paper presents the design and implementation recommendations pertaining to active directory system for Riordan Manufacturing. Microsoft Active Directory system is compliant to popular protocol called “Light Weight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)” which is a de-facto standard for directory services for interactions between the user and the shared resources on the network. LDAP is widely deployed in all UNIX flavors and Linux based network implementations. It maintains up-to-date information of all the networked resources & services, application configuration information, user credentials (username, password, and access privileges) and security related information.

The users of the organization can enjoy high level of productivity as they can quickly search & connect to a network resource and carry out the business transactions. The organization can trust the LDAP system for highly reliable access-control and security of the data accessible via networked resources. (Dias, John. 2002. pp3-8) Microsoft Active Directory logical components comprises of Forest, Trees, Domains, Organizational Units, Users, Groups, Global Catalogue and Schema. The Active Directory physical components comprises of the Sites, Domain Controller (DC), Additional Domain Controllers (ADC), The Domain Name Servers (DNS), Site Replication Services, and Group Policies Organization.

Some of the key business benefits of implementing Microsoft Active Directory System are: Riordan Manufacturing has four offices – the corporate HQ and R&D Center, the Plastic Fan plant having 250 employees at China, the plastic beverage container plant at Albany, GA having 45 employees and the custom plastic parts plant at Pontiac, MI and 130 employees. The network has Windows NT Servers as well and hence the AD will need to be implemented in “mixed” mode rather than “native” mode. The design proposed herewith is a single forest,