Setting up an enterprise-wide active directory can be challenging, because many design decisions that need to be made will later heavily impact how a large installation can be maintained. Hunter’s book is (as the cover claims) “a one stop shop for active directory deployment and troubleshooting.”

Chapter 1 covers installation planning, the physical and logical structure, and how to automate some of these steps. The author describes the interaction with the domain name system (DNS), dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), Windows Internet naming service (WINS), and NetBIOS in chapter 2. Once an active directory is installed, it needs to be maintained; users, groups, and file access need to be configured and kept up to date (topics discussed in chapter 3). Group policies are described in chapter 4. Security considerations such as Internet protocol security (IPSec) and audit policies are addressed in chapter 5.

Chapter 6 provides answers to typical questions related to large-scale installations (delegation of authority, trust relationships, and so on). Since most installations of active directories are not entirely new systems, but migrations from legacy systems, chapter 7 is very useful, showing readers how to migrate an NT 4 infrastructure.

Chapter 5 discusses security settings, in order to prevent bad things from happening. Still, disasters will happen, and efficient recovery procedures need to be established (these are discussed in chapter 8). Chapter 9 briefly explains the internals, such as schemas and metadata, and why administrators should care about them.

Unlike many other books on directory administration, this is an excellent book for gaining a real understanding of concepts and background information. The text is entertaining to read, and yet provides sufficient depth. The book contains only a few screen shots, a fact that makes it much better to read than other books on Microsoft technology, which often tend to be 1,000 pages of screen shots. The book’s form matches its title (“field guide”); it is small enough to take along when traveling.

If you need to work with active directories as an administrator, or need to plan an installation as a consultant or information technology (IT) manager, this book is an excellent source to quickly become familiar with the topic.