As you might be aware, every Microsoft technology has the requirement to be manageable through PowerShell and System Center. Manageability through System Center is done through Management Packs. (MPs). While I discussed the PowerShell manageability stories for the five Active Directory services last Saturday, below is the overview of the ...

Windows Server 2012 is a major leap forward for Server Core installations of Windows Server. Not only are Full installations of Windows Server convertible back and forth to Server Core installations without reinstallation, a whole slew of new Server Roles have become available for installation on the mean, clean Server Core installations. Active ...

Recently, one of my readers approached me with some questions on Managed Service Accounts (MSAs). From our discussion, I realized a lot of people may be unclear about the applicability of Managed Service Accounts (MSAs) and group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs). So, this blogpost features a comprehensive table, showing the applicability of ...

It’s not often, that Active Directory Domain Controllers get security updates. The Active Directory Domain Services Server Role is one of the most robustly written code, as I pointed out in an earlier blogpost on Statistics on Active Directory-related Security Bulletins. Since 2001, Microsoft has issued 18 Security Bulletins with patches to ...

A lot of people have an opinion on the Offline Domain Join (ODJ) functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Active Directory, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Of course, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but sometimes fact checking is useful for a discussion. To this point, I have captured the top 5 myths on ODJ from discussions ...

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 ...

For a while, Microsoft’s KnowledgeBase article 976424, titled Error code when the kpasswd protocol fails after you perform an authoritative restore: "KDC_ERROR_S_PRINCIPAL_UNKNOWN", has been available to solve issues with unexpected behavior after authoritatively restoring  the krbtg account on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server ...

Last week, Microsoft introduced a new Active Directory-related KnowledgeBase article, titled Event ID 46 and 7023 logged during startup of Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012. This article relates to the Windows Time (W32Time) service and the Netlogon (netlogon) service and their startup sequence. The situation On Windows Server 2008 ...

This week I got the chance to work with some x86 High Performance Computing hardware at the Donald Smits Center for Information Technology (CIT) at the University of Groningen. Their hardware typically contains more than 64 logical processors and TBs of RAM. 10Gb/s interconnects and loads of Solid State Disks (SSDs) are also not very uncommon in ...

I’m a Directory Services MVP. Have been for the last three years, too. This expertise is part of the Identity and Access area together with the ForeFront, ForeFront Identity Manager (FIM) and Enterprise Security MVPs. These latter guys and girl are really great. One of my favorite Enterprise Security MVPs is Paula Januszkiewicz. I’ve had the ...