Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Security Handbook

The Directory

Essentially, the Active Directory is a place that stores information in a hierarchical way about the various objects you can find within the network. Information such as username, user description, password, printers, shared resources, and so on is what you must manage when administering a network. In previous versions of Windows NT, this information was stored in several different places. The only thing domain controllers shared was the SAM (Security Account Manager), but this database only stored account information and security-related information such as policies and groups. With the Active Directory, searching for information with different tools in different places is a thing of the past. The Active Directory serves as the ...