In the past years, I’ve found many systems and many errors. Today, I’m sharing behavior in Microsoft Windows Server that had me frown and chuckle. A bug in Active Directory code I’ve been grateful for, since it illustrates the nature of software. Note: This behavior has not been publicized in the Microsoft KnowledgeBase (yet). In the ...

Whenever a worm utilizes the normal access and daily tools systems admins use, there is a significant problem. After all, shutting down the attack vector suddenly isn’t that easy. So, without making dramatic changes to your environment, how can you rest assured?     About Win32/Morto.A One of the latest threats to use ...

Microsoft has included numerous features in Active Directory the last couple of years. Also, more and more technologies in products like Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and the Windows client (Windows Vista, Windows 7) have an Active Directory opt-in to store information in Active Directory. All this bountiful integration, however, comes with ...

Active Directory relies on accurate time for a number of reasons. One of this reasons is Kerberos authentication, which by nature can only cope with a difference in time (time skew) of five minutes between the Kerberos server and client. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the time skew limitation and the overall Kerberos implementation as we know ...

You know, in terms of deploying servers in a smart way, so you can actually utilize them for as long as their economical lifecycle in a supported fashion without a need to reinstall them, I’ve made a stupid decision in advising IT Pros to deploy Server Core Domain Controllers in the last two years. The problem, you see, is the product team ...

Microsoft has published a document titled “SYSVOL Replication Migration Guide: FRS to DFS Replication” to the Download server today. The 52-page 416KB weighing document outlines how to get from using File Replication Service (FRS) replication to Distributed File System Replication(DFS-R) for the SYSVOL folder. Since DFS-R offers more performance, ...

Microsoft products cover a multitude of technologies, and thus are managed by a multitude of management attitudes, vision and scenarios. In the past Microsoft products lacked a common vision on management, but Microsoft is slowly changing this. All Windows Server products will be manageable through: Server Manager (locally on Full ...

The Read-only Domain Controller is one of the new and most existing features of Windows Server 2008. So is Server Core. Combining these two features opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your Active Directory environment. Server Core Domain Controllers are the high-performance low-maintenance brothers of Domain Controllers running on ...

Domain Controller Stickiness is a problem which prevents Active Directory clients to be connected to the best Domain Controller they can be. The root cause of this problem is once an Active Directory client found a Domain Controller (using DNS) it would store the name of that Domain Controller in its DC Locator cache and keep using that Domain ...

You might be running Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 Domain Controllers at the moment and you're looking to replace these servers with Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers to utilize the new features of Windows Server 2008. You might also be looking to replace your aging Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 Domain ...