Understanding Organizational Units and Containers

  Active Directory

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https://www.udemy.com/active-directory-group-policy-2012/learn/v4/t/lecture/8276672?start=0

Active Directory  Users and Computers > Domain.com

What are Containers?

  • Are structural objects that are included by default within Active Directory.
  • You cannot apply Group Policy Objects (aka GPOs) to Containers *IMPORTANT
  • You cannot create a Container with AD (but you can use adsiedit but likely never required)

Computers Container

  • Serves as a default location for new computers that join your domain.
  • When joined, a new AD Computer Account Object will be created inside this container.
  • To apply GPOs to a computer, you’ll need to move that computer out of the container and into an Organizational Unit (then you can apply security policies such as custom wallpapers, etc.)
    • You can leave them in the Computers container, but generally not best practice.

ForeignSecurityPrincipals Container

  • Contains Proxy Objects for Security Principals for other trusted domains.
    • Could be a user account or security group that resides inside of another domain.
  • If you do not establish a trust between this domain and another, you will not be using this container at all.

Managed Service Accounts (MSAs) Container

  • Holds the user accounts that are used to operate the applications or services that run on your servers or workstations.
  • These accounts do not use passwords – these are handled automatically.
  • To create an MSA, you need to use the PowerShell command line.  There is no Gui.

Users Container

  • Do not delete any of the default users and security groups!

Builtin BuiltinDomain

  • Contains a number of Security Groups
  • Unlike Users, these cannot be deleted

Organizational Units (OUs)

  • Used to organize and separate objects within AD.
  • Objects can be anything that AD can store
    • User Accounts
    • Computers, Printers, blah blah
  • If you have a Marketing Team, you can create an OU called Marketing and store all those users there.
  • You can assign specific permissions to OUs, that then automatically apply to all objects within that OU.

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