Active Directory Architecture and Management Questions

Comprehensive coverage of Microsoft Active Directory and directory services design, deployment, operation, and troubleshooting. Topics include the logical and physical structure of Active Directory such as forests, trees, domains, organizational units, naming contexts, domain controllers, global catalog servers, and site topology. Candidates should understand directory data models and object types and attributes, including user accounts, computer accounts, security groups and distribution groups, group scopes and nesting, membership management, and access control lists and permission models on directory objects. Expect questions on authentication and authorization flows including Kerberos based authentication, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol binds and queries, domain joining, trust relationships between domains and forests, and the impact of domain controller roles including flexible single master operation roles and read only domain controllers. Coverage also includes replication topology and behavior, site awareness and site link design, replication scheduling and conflict resolution, and techniques for troubleshooting replication and connectivity issues. Candidates should be able to explain group policy concepts for centralized configuration and security enforcement, delegation and administrative models, common management consoles and automation and scripting for administration, backup and recovery considerations, and how to design Active Directory deployments for scale, resilience, and integration with broader identity and access management and single sign on solutions.