Active Directory

Wither Still No Native ADUC for Windows Vista SP1

Chris Haaker — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:54:28 GMT

So with the release of Windows Server 2008 I was really looking forward to some post or announcement from Microsoft with regards to the availability of native Active Directory management tools that can be installed on Windows Vista SP1 without any mods, kludges or scripts. You know, they just work out of the box. Like the good ‘ol days when you copied adminpak.msi from Windows Server 2003 over to Windows XP.

Now that I am running Windows Server 2008 as a workstation I don't necessarily have to worry about this. As soon as I installed the server features for Active Directory Domain Controller Tools I had all my faithful friends like ADUC back at my disposal. So of course, I thought I would just grab adminpak.msi from c:\windows and be on my way. And yet, in the back of my brain,I knew there would be no such thing. I hate it when I am right.

So while it doesn't effect me in the near term it is effecting lots of others I am sure. People who would like the real tools to bring over to Windows Vista SP1. Perhaps there is a way to copy over all the bits and bobs and do some voodoo DLL registration to wrap it up and get it going. If someone finds out, please let me know!

Tags: Windows+Server+2008, ADUC, Windows+Vista+SP1, W2K8

PostPath Email and Collaboration Server

Chris Haaker — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:16:31 GMT

I have recently been introduced to a company called PostPath. They are a new technology company that have created a Linux-based alternative to Microsoft's Exchange. Their proposition is that Microsoft Outlook is the killer application. As long as users can run Outlook and have all the features and functionality that they are used to, it shouldn't matter what is serving it up on the back end. And if that back end can run on cheaper hardware and storage with a highly-flexible open source OS, all the better.

I have been working with the latest version of the PostPath server and it is pretty amazing. It does deliver as promised - full Outlook functionality at a fraction of the software, hardware and storage costs. PostPath has also signed a partnership with VMWare and is fully supported as a virtualized platform. This gives you tremendous flexibility when it comes to disaster recovery and business continuity. They fully (and seamlessly) support Blackberry clients and the Blackberry Enterprise Server. They have enhanced the open source version of Zimbra for their web-based client and added several enhancements. They also offer a mobility server called Sync Server which supports Windows Mobile 6 clients.

The PostPath server can run in a Microsoft Active Directory environment by itself or in co-existence with an already installed Exchange organization. If Exchange is not already present, it can perform a full forest and domain prep to add the correct schema extensions to Active Directory. Once installed, when viewed within ESM, it looks like any other Exchange server. You can create mailboxes on it using ADUC just as you do with any other Exchange server. Users can be migrated to and from the PostPath server using the traditional ADUC move mailbox process. The one downside is, since it is running Linux, it does not respond to WMI calls. Therefor, you cannot administer or browse its resources through ESM and there are some workarounds for commonly performed Exchange tasks. However, enhancements to the product are being added at a rapid clip and the engineering team is very responsive to customer feedback and suggestions for engineering enhancements.

So far it has been a pleasure to work with the product and I look forward to learning more about it and its capabilities as an alternative to Exchange.

Technorati Tags: PostPath,Exchange Alternative,Exchange,Microsoft,Active Directory,Zimbra,Linux

Windows Server 2008 RC0 Available

Chris Haaker — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:19:34 GMT

Microsoft has posted the "RC0" build of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition.

Adding Exchange Tabs to ADUC in Vista

Chris Haaker — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:44:00 GMT

There has been a hack and an official KB on how to run ADUC under Vista. And while not perfect, it is functional. No one I know can understand Microsoft's logic for not having this solved prior to shipping Vista.

If you also want to enable the Exchange extensions in ADUC there is one more step. After you do the things mentioned here, copy these three DLL's from a Windows 2003 Server (c:\%systemroot%\system32):

netui0.dll
netui1.dll
netui2.dll

Then re-register regsvr32 \windows\system32\maildsmx.dll.

Technorati tags: ADUC, Windows Vista, Exchange, Exchange tabs, Exchange Extensions

One of My Favorite TechNet Magazine Resources

Chris Haaker — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 21:11:00 GMT

I love reading TechNet Magazine. They always have a host of timely and well-written articles in every issue. And as much as I try to go "paperless" having a printed magazine comes in handy when in an airport or when I have to spend extended amounts of time in "my office." On occasion they will have some bonus posters or materials included in each issue. My all time favorite is now available from Microsoft Downloads as a .pdf file. It loses some of its impact and grandeur not being in poster form, but IMO it is a goodie nonetheless.

TechNet Magazine Active Directory Component Jigsaw Poster

Technorati tags: TechNet, TechNet Magazine, Active Directory Poster

Back From Hong Kong

Chris Haaker — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:02:00 GMT

I have finally returned from Hong Kong after another not-so-fun fifteen hour flight. At least I had a window seat this time but as bad as I thought Delta was at times, I was being spoiled in comparison to what you get on a United flight. A couple of tiny bags of snacks a tiny little cup of a drink - not even a whole can of soda or mini-bottle of water! They open a big bottle and pour out of it. The screens for the movies during the flight (what else do you have to do - there are no power adapter plugs in coach) were horrible! All kinds of blurs, squiggles and interference. The only thing that went well is we weren't forced to pay five dollars to use our headphones to watch the movies!! Ugh. Please, Delta, open a route to Asia.

Everything went well with the migration. This is about the tenth one I have done overseas and it followed the typical formula:

No matter how well you prepare there will be a large number of things missed with regards to client machines. Some small and some large. Fortunately, few are show stoppers. I have found due to the sheer numbers involved as well as language and cultural differences you will never uncover all the nits ahead of time.
Twelve hour days are the norm - if not the minimum. Get in the office by 8am and work until you start making dumb mistakes.
Go back to the hotel room and then work another 3-4 hours answering emails and doing things from your normal job.
Start all over the next day.

We laid in the network first and got it squared away so we could then dcpromo the domain controller and allow replication to begin. The next question the PM had for me is how long will replication take? Our estimates came in at 41 hours. How will we know when it is complete? Good question. I had never thought about it but all of my previous dcpromos had been on LANs or pretty beefy WAN links. I never had to worry about if or when replication would complete. I knew how to check the various of aspects of replication with REPLMON but after combing through the event logs I found this little message that basically said "this wont be a domain controller until replication completes. To check to see when it completes, run the net share command and look for the sysvol share."

Once the domain controller was promoted we could begin with the client migrations. We used the great new desktop migration tools available in the Windows Vista AIK. ImageX especially came in handy in imaging the old workstations before laying down the new image. We could then mount the .wim file if needed to extract any data that was missed in the migration such as an obscure .pst file. The new file-based image is so much more convenient in this regard than the bit-based images that other disk imaging programs like Ghost provide.

Windows Server System Reference Architecture (WSSRA)

Chris Haaker — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:30:00 GMT

The Infrastructure Architecture blog at the Microsoft sponsored SkyScrapr website has finally put up another post (<rant> the first since 6/9/06 - what is it with Microsoft blogs? One post per 90 days ... I thought the Tablet PC blog was on a roll and then nothing ... </rant>) this time highlighting a tool called the Windows Server System Reference Architecture. A prescriptive guide to knitting together all the bits and bobs that make up the plumbing of an infrastructure. The cool part being that it was all vetted out in a lab environment - not just tossed around by a bunch of engineers with nothing better to do. Read on!

Microsoft Server System Reference Architecture homepage

Overview

Windows Server System Reference Architecture is a technology architecture that has been rigorously tested and proven in a partnered lab environment to provide exceptional planning and implementation guidance that addresses fundamental infrastructure issues such as availability, security, scalability, and manageability of the platform.
WSSRA consists of the following downloadable packages:

Overview Documents
Architecture Blueprints
Implementation Guides
Deployment Toolkit

The Overview Documents provide the supporting information that will aid the understanding of the documentation set and ensure its most effective use within IT infrastructure. The documents included in this download package are as follows:

Getting Started
Introduction
Lab Implementation