Administering AD DS

What administrative tools are available?

Server Manager has what you need

Before you can start to create and manage user, group, and computer accounts, you must understand which tools that you can use to run these various management tasks.

You perform most AD DS administration with the following snap‑ins that are available from the Server ManagerTools menu.

• Active Directory Administrative Center. The ADAC is an improved GUI to run AD DS object management by using task‑oriented navigation.
• Active Directory Users and Computers. You use this snap‑in to manage most common day‑to‑day resources. This includes users, groups, computers, and organizational units (OUs). You will likely use this snap-in much more frequently than the other three.
• Active Directory Sites and Services. You use this snap‑in to manage replication, network topology, and related services.
• Active Directory Domains and Trusts. You use this snap‑in to configure and maintain trust relationships and the forest functional level.

Active Directory Schema. You use this snap-in to examine and change the definition of Active Directory attributes and object classes. It's the blueprint for AD DS. You will rarely view it, and even more rarely change it. By default, the Active Directory Schema snap‑in isn't registered. Thus, you won't see the tool, by default, in the Tools menu. To register the snap-in, run regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll.