Microsoft Active Directory

[Taz]

I moved departments a few months ago and now provide consulting for a new product. This integrates with Active Directory and i'm trying to find a tutorial that provides a reasonable look into AD (i.e. explains, the concepts of forests, distinguished names, organisational units, etc.).

Can anyone recommend such a tutorial, either online or a book?

[Moby-Dick]

AD is a big big subject
have you ever managed any NT domains ?

I'd look at parts of the windows 2000 / 2003 training ( there are several AD modules for this )

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-294.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-297.asp

for example.

[Taz]

Yep, AD is big! BTW, i've never managed any NT domains so that's probably a bit of a handicap.

I need to be able to discuss the changes that our software makes to AD at customer sites confidently. I typically have to have a meeting with their network/AD people and they start asking me all sorts of questions that I cannot answer.

Our software generates LDIF scripts that the customer must run against their AD domain controller(s).

The software that i'm responsible for stores information in AD (or ADAM) and i've had a play with LDAP browsers and ADSIedit but don't really know what i'm doing!

[Moby-Dick]

You have to bear in mind that a copy of the entire AD is held on every Domain Controller. This can probably have quite an effect on the rollout of your system , expecially in a branch network environment.

to give you an example , when I installed software which had 3 seperate stages of AD changes ( schema , forest and domain ) It took over 6 days to install as I had to wait 2 days to guarentee full replication to all sites ( over 500 ) before proceeding to the next step.

Feel free to pm me with further details / more questions if you dont want to post any quasi sensetive info on the public board.

[Taz]

Thanks for the offer of help Moby. I'm going to pop into PC World tomorrow and have a browse around for something like a 'Dummies Guide...' book. I'll also check on Amazon. I don't need to know AD to MCSE level or anything like that, merely enough to be able to talk to AD admins when I am on site.

[Moby-Dick]

'ave some of this
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/Dumm...764506595.html