Active Directory Operations Clinic
Explore directory architecture, reason through identity evidence, and work three fictional Northstar Services incidents. Your objective is to identify the failed service boundary—not guess a destructive fix.
Understand the directory.
Explain each concept in your own words before revealing the answer. You can revisit any card.
Forest, domain and OU
What would you explain to another technician?
Trace identity evidence. Defend the decision.
Each question has one best choice given the evidence. Incorrect answers include an explanation, so you can try again.
Which statement correctly distinguishes a forest, a domain, and an OU?
Your Northstar ticket queue.
These are focused AD DS Practice cases, not full Labs. Investigate discovery, directory consistency and resource authorization before proposing a scoped change.
The branch no one could authenticate
After a branch network upgrade, users on one VLAN cannot sign into domain resources. Headquarters remains unaffected, and both domain controllers appear online.
- Affected branch clients received new DHCP settings.
- DC-01 and DC-02 are reachable from approved management networks.
- A branch client cannot resolve the domain's LDAP SRV records.
Establish the discovery path
Which evidence should the technician gather next?