Active Directory Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is an Active Directory?

An active directory is a directory structure that is used on Microsoft Windows based servers and computers for storing data and information about networks and domains.

Active Directory has information about all the objects such as users, computers, resources like Printers, shared files in an organization’s network. It is like a telephone directory. It is software to arrange and store information. Active Directory service provides access and permissions based on that information. 

It arranges all the network's users, computers and other objects into logical and hierarchical groupings.

2. What are the Active Directory Objects?

Active Directory Objects refer to physical entities of a network. There can be many objects such as Forest, Domain, User, Group, Contact, Computer, Shared Folder, Printer, Site, Subnet. These objects are explained by their attributes like Name, Location, Departments etc.

3. Explain Forest.

A group of Active Directory trees is known as a forest.

An Active Directory forest is the top most logical container in an Active Directory configuration that contains domains, users, computers, and group policies.

4. What is Active Directory Domain?

It is a logical grouping of objects. You can also call it an administrative boundary for objects. You can have unlimited number of objects in a domain and objects need not be in a same physical location. If a user has access to a domain, he can logon from anywhere and any computer in that domain.

The permission, policies and rights can be set for all the objects at the domain level or at the individual object level as well.

5. Why should we use Active Directory?

We use Active Directory because of following reasons:

Using Active Directory, it is possible to have layered security with policies and permissions for security at different levels.

We can have objects located anywhere physically yet access the domain resources securely. 

With AD, we can add millions of users to a single domain. 

It offers centralized storage for users, departments which makes backup and restore efficient, fast and easy.

6. Where all can Active Directory be used?

Active Directory helps you organize your company’s users and computers.

It can be used in any organization that has a Network setup and the organization which requires 24*7 uptime.

7. Which is the default protocol used in directory services?

The default protocol used in directory services is LDAP ( Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

LDAP is an acronym for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and it refers to the protocol used to access, query and modify the data stored within the AD directories. 

LDAP is an internet standard protocol that runs over TCP/IP.

8. What is Kerberos?

Kerberos is an authentication protocol for network. It uses secret-key cryptography to offer strong authentication for client-server applications.

9. What is Active Directory Schema?

Schema is an active directory component describes all the attributes and objects that the directory service uses to store data.

10. What is the domain controller?

The server that responds to user requests for access to the domain is called the Domain Controller or DC. The Domain Controller allows a user to gain access to the resources within the domain through the use of a single username and password.

11. What is SYSVOL, and why is it important?

SYSVOL is a folder that exists on all domain controllers. SYSVOL stores all of the security related information of the Active Directory.