When you build test environments regularly, at some point you’ll want to fill your Active Directory quickly. If, for instance, you have a data set with Organizational Units (OUs), user accounts and groups, you’ll want to quickly import this data. If, on the other hand, in your business you’re allowed to use the user information from a production ...

In the past 11 years, Microsoft has released four versions of Windows Server on which you could install Active Directory. On all these platforms, Microsoft offered two ways to promote a server to a Domain Controller. In this blogpost I’ll reveal the differences between the advanced mode and normal mode for dcpromo.exe for the Windows Server 2003 ...

Those of you running Domain Controllers with full installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 or are managing Windows Server 2008 R2-based Domain Controllers using the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) on Windows 7, might have seen the following configuration warning in the Active Directory Best Practice Analyzer (AD BPA): About the Protect ...

Since Windows Server 2008, Microsoft no longer offers the ability to restart a Domain Controller in Directory Services Restore Mode (DSRM) from the default F8 boot menu. About Directory Services Restore Mode For Windows Server-based Domain Controllers, a special startup mode exists, where the Active Directory database isn’t loaded. This startup ...

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 ...

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 ...

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Edition offers the ability to make virtual machines highly available by leveraging failover clustering. This however is not a good idea in the case of Active Directory Domain Controllers. In this post I’ll explain why Hyper-V High Availability for Domain Controllers is not a good idea and ...

Last time we discussed how to transition your Active Directory to Windows Server 2008, which was something a lot of you were interested in. This time I'm talking in-place upgrading Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 Domain Controllers to Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers. While this might seem like simply feeding the DVD and ...