Active Directory Administration for Windows Server 2025

Active Directory sits behind nearly every login, file share, and policy in a Windows environment. When it is poorly managed, small mistakes compound fast. A cluttered OU design hides stale Group Policy Objects. A replication or DNS issue stalls branch sites. An untested backup turns a single-folder restore into a day of lost work across the company.

Who should take it: This course is built for help desk staff and junior admins moving into systems administration roles. It also fits Team Leads who need a consistent AD baseline across the team. It is designed as an add-on to Windows Server Administration: Core Infrastructure for Enterprise IT. For newer staff, assign that course first.

Time investment: The course runs about 7.3 hours across eight skills. Each skill takes roughly 50–60 minutes, so learners can complete one skill per week without pulling them off operational work.

Risk and security framing: Training covers several areas that matter for risk and audit conversations:

• Active Directory object management with ADAC and ADUC context
• AD sites, replication behavior, and branch-site planning
• Authoritative and non-authoritative restores
• Why VM snapshots are a risky substitute for real AD backups
• Regular restore testing

Change-management note: The course encourages simpler delegation, which often means using built-in roles or group memberships instead of custom delegation. It also recommends keeping user and computer GPO settings in separate policies. Expect the team to identify cleanup work in existing OU and GPO structures after completing it.

How CBT Nuggets supports the outcome: A resettable playground virtual lab and hands-on labs throughout the course let practitioners practice account management, OU design, replication, and restores without touching production. Team Reporting helps IT Directors track completion across assigned learners.

IT teams use this training to keep Active Directory stable, recoverable, and secure as the organization grows. The course draws on real failure scenarios. In one, an administrator meant to restore a single user's home directory and instead restored the entire server, costing 10,000 employees a full day's work. This training helps your team avoid mistakes like that in production.

• Fewer costly restore mistakes: Your team learns system state backups, non-authoritative and authoritative restores, and why VM snapshots can cause update sequence number collisions in AD. They also learn to test restores regularly instead of relying on untested backups.
• Faster troubleshooting across sites: Admins learn to troubleshoot replication behavior, check DNS first when site links stall, and plan replication around WAN bandwidth limits.
• Cleaner, more predictable Group Policy: Team Leads can enforce an OU design that controls how GPOs flow. That means separating user and computer settings, removing empty or orphaned OUs, and avoiding complex delegation when a group membership or built-in role will do.
• Stronger protection for privileged accounts: Your team applies a tiered administration model with hardened workstations and jump servers. They also learn to apply stronger controls to high-value accounts like domain admins without slowing down everyday productivity users.

Your team also learns to speed up onboarding through bulk account creation with PowerShell, and to fix slow cross-domain resource access with shortcut trusts. The included Playground Lab gives practitioners a resettable environment to practice these tasks away from production.

Knowledge

• How organizational unit design controls the downward flow of Group Policy Objects, and why empty OUs, orphaned GPOs, and complex delegation create risk
• Group Policy order of inheritance, and why user and computer settings belong in separate policies for easier troubleshooting
• How Active Directory sites, site links, and replication protect WAN bandwidth, and why DNS is the first suspect when replication stalls
• Kerberos core concepts, cross-domain authentication, and when a shortcut trust reduces slow resource access caused by tree walking
• Why tested restores matter more than backups alone, and why VM snapshots can cause update sequence number collisions in Active Directory
• Active Directory security fundamentals for account management, delegation, and administrative permissions

Ability

• Use Active Directory Administrative Center and its generated PowerShell as a starting point for bulk account creation scripts
• Design and build an OU structure from case-study requirements in a hands-on lab
• Configure sites and replication, then observe replication behavior and troubleshoot common configuration issues
• Add a child domain and plan trust relationships across a forest
• Perform a system state backup and choose between non-authoritative and authoritative restores
• Apply security-minded account management practices when using scripts and administrative tools for Active Directory administration