This appendix contains explanations of how to create user accounts for use in the Windows environment. If you want a brief overview of Active Directory, just keep reading. If you are looking for specifics about how to create domain, local, or SQL Server user accounts, you can just jump to those sections. | MCAD MCSD MICROSOFT CERTIFIED APPLICATION DEVELOPER MICROSOFT CERTIFIED SOLUTION DEVELOPER E Creating User Accounts 2 Appendix E Creating User Accounts T . . his appendix contains explanations of how to create user accounts for use in the Windows environment. If you want a brief overview of Active Directory just keep reading. If you are looking for specifics about how to create domain local or SQL Server user accounts you can just jump to those sections. The network you will need to try the domain exercises in this appendix consist of a Windows 2000 server configured to be a domain controller and a Windows 2000 Professional workstation that is used to control local accounts. The Windows Authentication Scheme In every computer network starting with the mainframe through the first office local area networks LANs to today s enterprise networks there has always been a need to simplify authentication of the user s credentials. Authentication started out with a local database of user names and passwords in the mainframe that the user had to be authenticated against before getting access to any resources on the mainframe. When a second mainframe was needed the user had to authenticate against that mainframe s database usually with a different user name and password. In the LAN environment that connected together a number of users to file and print servers the LAN used a central database that the user authenticated against in order the gain access to the LAN s resources. If the same user needed access to multiple LANs there would be multiple user name and password combinations for each LAN. That was the situation that virtually all companies faced during the early part of the 1990s. Multiple user name-password combinations were proliferating that the end user needed to remember and that needed to be managed. The solution was to combine all the locally maintained databases into one central database where the authentication information was stored and that provided a .
