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 ...

Every good Active Directory Domain Services implementation started with sizing Domain Controllers appropriately for the environment in which they needed to be able to service clients for a period of four to five years. For years, we’ve been using adsizer.exe, a part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit for this purpose. This tool was released for ...

For 84% of all organizations, Active Directory is the cornerstone of their networking infrastructure. Heavy investments in Active Directory technologies have enabled them to achieve authentication, authorization, auditing and centralized management goals, by leveraging Domain Controllers, PKI, Rights Management Services, Federation and Group ...

The Microsoft marketing department has decided to label a few of the incredible Windows features in Windows 7 and Windows 8 as ‘To Go’. Prime examples, of course, are ‘BitLocker-To-Go’ (encryption of removable drives) and ‘Windows-To-Go’ (running Windows from a removable drive). This week, I’m labeling the Windows Sidebar (Windows Vista) and ...

Customers often ask me and my colleagues for innovative solutions, based on proven technology. While that sounds like a contradictio in terminus, we always deliver. The key behind these successes is to research and implement new technology in an early stage. From there, we combine these new technologies, where appropriate, with our proven ...

I’ve never made a secret of my continuing loathing of PST files, I just never displayed it on my blog. I always felt it would be too negative, while I always try to to find the positive angle to a story. Today, finally, I have positive news on PSTs! What’s wrong with PSTs then? If you need to ask this question, I guess you’ve never been an admin ...

I’ve seen a couple of vendors release backup products, specifically targeted at Hyper-V. Some solutions utilize the Hyper-V Volume Shadow Service (VSS) writer to make backups. The big question, however, is whether this type of backup is of any use to backup Domain Controllers for disaster recovery. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of issues ...

This page contains the following whitepaper: Host-Based Backups and Restores of Domain Controllers How to be effective in backing up and restoring virtual Domain Controller with host-based backup solutions Title:Host-Based Backups and Restores of domain Controllers How to be effective in backing up and restoring virtual Domain ...

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 ...