Active Directory

News Roundup: AD turns heads, Exchange hits RTM

Lots going on in the world of Windows this month, as you might expect. Here’s a roundup of some of the top news from this past week:

1. Forget Live Migration; AD is king in R2
   While most of the attention around Windows Server 2008 R2 has been given to Hyper-V enhancements and brand new features like Direct Access, when it comes right down to it, Active Directory is still No. 1 on the priority list for admins.
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More on the Active Directory Recycle Bin in R2

In this month’s episode of The Windows Report, IT author and consultant Don Jones explained why admins shouldn’t expect Windows Server 2008 R2’s new AD Recycle Bin feature to replace third-party backup tools.

Click the Play button below to hear the rest of our conversation with Don, with details on exactly how the new feature works, and why the term “recycle bin” might be a little misleading.

 

 Micosoft MVP Don Jones breaks down the AD Recycle Bin: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Windows Report — Will AD have your back in R2?

August is all about Active Directory on The Windows Report.

First, we talk with IT author and consultant Don Jones to find out if the new AD Recycle Bin feature in Windows 2008 R2 is really all it’s cracked up to be. Then Microsoft MVP Gary Olsen returns to demonstrate how to perform a quick Active Directory replication health check.

Change management solution simplifies AD operations

I spoke recently with a rep over at Netwrix to get some details on their Change Reporter solution for Active Directory (currently in version 5.0).

For those who don’t know, Netwrix as a company is partly focused on simplifying change management of, well, pretty much everything. This includes separate Change Reporter solutions for Exchange and SQL Server, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and VMware Infrastructure 3, each of which are designed to answer four questions:
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What’s new with Active Directory for Windows Server 2008 R2?

As with every major OS release from Microsoft, there’s a lot of interest right now in Windows 2008 R2. I recently spoke with Justin Graham, senior product manager for Microsoft’s Windows Server team, about some of the key changes/enhancements made to Active Directory for the upcoming release. We’ll be doing an in-depth article on this very topic later in the year, but for now here is a rundown of some of the top new features.

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New AD Integration feature could make life easier for admins

What do Microsoft Management Summit and Tech-Ed 2009 have in common? Well, about a million things, obviously. But among them is that Pete Zerger will be at both events to present sessions on the new Active Directory Integration feature for SCOM 2007.

Pete is an MVP and founder of both System Center Forum and the System Center User Group, so needless to say, he knows a thing or two about Operations Manager. Despite being in Scotland for business, Pete was kind enough to speak with me a few weeks ago about AD Integration and what it means to admins.

It’s a short interview, but definitely worth checking out for those who work in SCOM-based environments. Here is a little sample of what Pete had to say about the feature:

“What this feature does is allow us to fully automate agent deployment for Operations Manager-based environments. So part of what is baked into the Operations Manager agent is that as the agent is started up, it will actually query it’s local Active Directory domain to see if configuration information has been published for an Operations Manager management group.”

According to Pete, AD Integration is designed to not only minimize administrative effort (hooray!), but reduce TCO as well, with large enterprises standing to benefit the most.

I’ll be adding more posts on what to expect at MMS and Tech-Ed this year as we get closer to both events, but if there is anything in particular that you’d like to know about, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can dig up.