What is Active Directory and how does it work?

Posted by MDMarra on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by MDMarra
Published on 2012-06-27T03:47:46Z Indexed on 2012/06/28 3:18 UTC
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Windows

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active-directory

This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory.

What is Active Directory? What does it do and how does it work?

I find myself explaining some of what I assume is common knowledge about it almost daily. This question will, hopefully, serve as a canonical question and answer for most basic Active Directory questions. If you feel that you can improve the answer to this question, please edit away.

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