Windows Server® 2012 Unleashed

Windows Server 2012 Core to an Active Directory Environment

For an organization that does not have Windows Active Directory already in place, that is one place to start because AD DS is key to application and user authentication. For organizations that already have a fully operational Active Directory running on Windows 2003 or Windows 2008, upgrading to AD DS on Windows Server 2012 might be something that is addressed a little later in the upgrade cycle when AD DS 2012 functionality is needed. To get a lot of the Windows Server 2012 server functionality like 2012 DFS, SharePoint Services, Hyper-V virtualization, and so on, an organization can still run on an older Active Directory environment (typically Active Directory 2003 Native mode). However, ...