TABLE OF CONTENTS With the introduction of new revisions to Microsoft products be it Windows, Exchange, Communications Server, or others we have seen a trend toward roles within each product, as opposed to the various products being an all-in-one type of solution (as with Exchange 2007), or being additional features that work as a snap-in, such as DNS in Windows 2003.
With earlier versions of Windows Server 2000 or 2003, an Active Directory server was just that an Active Directory server. What we are trying to say here is that it was more-or-less an all-or-nothing deal when creating a domain controller in Windows 2003. Very little flexibility existed in the way a domain controller could be installed, with the exception of whether a domain controller would also be a global catalog server or flexible single master operation (FSMO) server.
With the release of Windows Server 2008, we have several new ways to deploy an Active Directory domain controller. In this chapter, we will discuss the new roles available in Windows Server 2008, how to create a domain controller, and how to implement and manage server roles.
Windows Server 2008 offers many new ways to skin the Active Directory cat, if you will. With the introduction of these new roles is a new way to determine how they are implemented, configured, and managed within an Active Directory domain or forest. We will be discussing each of these Active Directory roles in depth later in this chapter, but the new roles (and the...
