Active Directory experiences revealed

One of the reasons most often cited for the slower-than-expected rollout of Windows 2000 servers is the complexity of Active Directory. Now, I've been saying for over two years that this was one part of Windows 2000 that required quite a bit of upfront planning - but its hard to plan something when you have no direct experience with the technology.

Ideally, you'd like to have the benefit of other people's efforts in planning Active Directory and rolling it out, and there are any number of consultants you can hire who will give you that benefit. But now, there's a much less expensive way to learn.

Microsoft has just offered up two new guides (www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies/directory/default.asp#section10) for planning and installing Windows 2000 networks. " Best Practice Active Directory Design for Managing Windows Networks " and its companion, " Best Practice Active Directory Deployment for Managing Windows Networks " contain the results of a number of successful Active Directroy deployments by Microsoft customers large and small.

By combining the best practices learned from these deployments into clear and simple documents, Microsoft expects the guides to enable customers to dramatically reduce the time it takes to plan for and deploy Active Directory. The guides have been tested for use at companies with up to 100,000 users and 200 physical locations, and address the concerns that have turned up in a majority of Active Directory deployments within enterprises.

The guides use a step-by-step, flowchart-driven methodology to describe how to plan and deploy Active Directory in small to enterprise-class environments. The combined table of contents is:

* Determining the Number of Active Directory Forests

* Designing an Active Directory Forest

* Active Directory Deployment Process

* Testing and Verifying the Deployment Process

* Configuring DNS for the Forest Root

* Creating the Forest Root

* Deploying Regional Domains

* Creating a New Regional Domain

* In-Place Upgrading of Account Domain

* Restructuring Account Domains

* Restructuring Resource Domains

* Decommissioning the Windows NT 4.0 Domains

* Importing Accounts and Data From Other Sources.

If there's anything in the table of contents that you don't understand backward and forwards, then you need to read these documents. Even if you've already deployed Active DIrectory, reading these could help you uncover a little mistake which could fester and become a large problem in time.

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. His most recent book is "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks" published by SAMS. Dave's company, Virtual Quill, provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more at Virtual Quill or by e-mail at info@vquill.com

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