Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) administration and management includes 12 major tasks. These tasks cover a wide breadth of business needs and are not all performed solely by AD DS administrators. In fact, administrators can and should delegate several tasks to other members of their technical community, technicians, help desk personnel, even users such as team managers and administrative assistants.

Any systems administrator will agree that Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) offers comprehensive services for network administration. In fact, AD DS goes beyond the simple Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) services most manufacturers publish. An LDAP service is designed to provide an organized set of records, often using a hierarchical structure. For example, a phone book is a simple directory.