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 ...

As you might be aware, every Microsoft server product has the requirement to be manageable through PowerShell and System Center. The PowerShell requirement is formulated as part of the Common Engineering Criteria (CEC). With PowerShell available as a version 3 product (and part of Windows Server 2012) it’s time to see how the teams, responsible ...

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 ...

Microsoft has released KnowledgeBase Article 2830511, detailing a bug in the Installation Wizard of Windows Server 2012 Essentials, that prevents you from installing the server as a Domain Controller for an Active Directory domain with a public top-level domain (TLD), like .com, .corp, .org, .edu, .int and the country-specific top-level domains. ...

In the earlier 20 blogposts on new features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, I’ve covered most of the main stream new features. Today, I’m covering a lesser known feature: SID Compression. While this feature has been around in earlier versions of Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server, it has been enhanced ...

Windows Deployment Services has a long-standing tradition of being part of the Windows Server Operating System. What used to be Remote Installation Services (RIS), became Windows Deployment Services (WDS) in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. Windows Deployment Services (WDS) has ties to Active Directory, as I’ve blogged about earlier. In ...

When your organization is looking to implement Windows Server 2012-based Domain Controllers, your Active Directory environment needs to meet certain requirements. Two of these requirements are the domain functional level and forest functional level. In this blogpost I’ll explain the required domain and forest functional levels for the specific ...

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 ...