I’m working hard at getting up to speed on the whole Microsoft Active Directory thing.
Until lately, I’ve not had either the need nor the opportunity to get heavily involved in supporting customers in a full-blow AD environment. Sure, there are some basic “foundational" things I’ve been able to pick up and use, but now we are moving forward into a brave new world and I gotta kick up my expertise a bit. I’ve already purchased and am working through this excellent Active Directory: Designing, Deploying, and Running Active Directory, Fourth Edition (Amazon.com link) book to get the ball rolling.
So expect a few more AD-related posts around here…at least on the front end they will be more resource linking related as I fill out my virtual bookshelf.
- Group Policy for Beginners - Microsoft Download Center - Great MS Word file to introduce basic Group Policy concepts.
- Introduction to Active Directory - Learnthat.com - Nice heavily illustrated tutorial on Active Directory basics.
- Active Directory Search Results - Microsoft Download Center. Lots and lots of documents, tools and tips.
- Microsoft Events (Beta) - Amazing Microsoft site chock-full of awesome webcasts, podcasts, and virtual training sessions. All categorized, searchable, and level-rated Note the only “gotcha” is that the site seems to be driven by Silverlight and is very Internet Explorer dependent. Don’t hop to these pages in another browser unless it contains an IE-engine rendering engine.
- Active Directory Related Pages - Microsoft Events - honed down to just AD items. I’ve got a lot of work here. For example, there is this Migrating from Novell NetWare to Windows Server 2003 you can eventually find which includes the full lab as well as a PDF guide. Cool!
- Free Active Directory Virtual Labs - The Life of Brian
- Download: Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with SP1 - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details
- Download: Group Policy Documentation Survival Guide - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details
The 4sysops - For Windows Administrators website hosted by Michael Pietroforte is my go-to source for the best of tools and tips related to Windows system administration. It is full of great information and resources related to Active Directory items!
- Active Directory - 4sysops - Link roundup of ALL AD-tagged posts at 4sysops
- Free Active Directory Tools - 4sysops - Link roundup of ALL (free) AD-related tools featured on 4sysops
- FREE: Active Directory Telephone Book - 4sysops - free tool to create an organizational phone-book based on AD information. Knowledge is power!
- FREE: Active Directory Topology Diagrammer - 4sysops - New feature/tool supported by Visio 2003 or higher.
- FREE: SysAdmin Anywhere – Active Directory Management - 4sysops - really slick interface on this tool to manage users in AD.
- FREE: AD Info – User friendly Active Directory reporting tool - 4sysops - full featured tool that has lots of pre-built queries for reporting.
- FREE: Account Lockout Tools – View lockout status and unlock account - 4sysops - Feature post on a component from Microsoft’s Account Lockout and Management Tools. Sweet.
- FREE: AD Tidy – Identify last logged on user and computer accounts - 4sysops - “It can be used to identify when user/computer accounts last logged on to the network and can tidy up these accounts in various different ways.”
- FREE: Active Directory Explorer – Active Directory Viewer - 4sysops - Review and reminder of the must-have Microsoft Sysinternals AD Explorer utility. Power to the people!
- How to disable USB drive use in an Active Directory domain - 4sysops - Just in case you need to…
- Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 1: Profile size - 4sysops - Great troubleshooting guide on login issues.
- Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 2: The 3-headed monster- 4sysops - Great troubleshooting guide on login issues continued.
- Change the local administrator password on multiple computers with PowerShell - 4sysops - Who doesn’t have to deal with this monster from time to time.
Expect more AD-related resource posts moving forward.
If you have any great and free AD-related tools, tips and resources please share in the comments!
Cheers!
--Claus V.
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