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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...