Related content

• Your Medical ID
• Manage your Medical ID password

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• Datacenter Operations

Active Directory (Microsoft)

What is it and what is it for?

Active Directory is what you log in to when accessing the Medical Center's network or other networked resources and applications.  It functions as the central authentication point for application and network access, and will function as the core system for future identity management and "Single Sign On" services.

Active Directory is the integrated, distributed directory service that is included with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. This directory plays many roles, from functioning as the backbone of distributed security to providing a service-publishing framework.  When you log into the MEDICAL domain, you are logging into the Medical Center's central directory structure using Microsoft's Active Directory architecture.

Active Directory provides a central service to organize network resources, user accounts, computers and applications, as well as to secure Intranet and Internet network access.

What are some of its features?

• Security - Active Directory provides the infrastructure for a variety of security capabilities.  Using mutual authentication, clients can verify the identity of a server before transferring sensitive data.
   
• Simplified and Flexible Administration - Delegation of administrative responsibilities allows roles to be distributed more efficiently.
   
• Scalability - Active Directory uses the Domain Name System (DNS) as a locator mechanism.  DNS is the hierarchical, distributed, highly scalable name-space used on the Internet to resolve computer and service names to Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) addresses.  The directory stores information using domains, which are partitions that let you distribute the directory over a large network of varying speed and reliability. The directory uses database technology and has been tested to accept millions of objects (users, groups, computers, shared file folders, printers, and more). This combination of scalable locator, partitioning, and scalable storage ensures that the directory scales gracefully as your organization grows.
• High Availability - With multi-master replication, Active Directory offers high availability of both query and update operations.
   
• Flexibility - The schema, which contains a definition for every object class that can exist in a directory service, is extensible.  This allows both administrators and software developers to tailor the directory to their needs.
   
• Open Standards Support for authentication - This makes it possible to use a wide variety of software with Active Directory, such as LDAP-based address book clients.

Active Directory is built on standards-based protocols such as:
--  DNS, for locating servers running Active Directory.
--  Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) as a query and update protocol.
-- The Kerberos protocol for logging on and authentication.

More more information on our Active Directory implementation, contact the Datacenter Operations group.