News
Active Directory: Microsoft Buttressing Best Practices Docs
- By Scott Bekker
- December 12, 2001
PHILADELPHIA -- Acknowledging a shortcoming in documentation, Microsoft Corp. is working to make more best practices documents available to help customers move their Windows networks to the Active Directory.
Stuart Kwan, group program manager for the Active Directory, noted in a keynote talk at the Techmentor Summit on Active Directory here this week that the Windows 2000 Active Directory documentation left something to be desired.
"We gave you the 1,500 pages of the distributed systems guide and said go do it. That was probably not the best way to do it," Kwan said Tuesday.
In an effort to provide more practical, step-by-step information, Microsoft has posted several White Papers and is developing several more, Kwan said.
Kwan provided his own "Must Read List" for Active Directory planners, four white papers currently available at www.microsoft.com/activedirectory under the "Planning and Deployment" section.
Those white papers are:
"Best Practice Active Directory Design for Managing Windows Networks";
"Best Practice Active Directory Deployment for Managing Windows Networks";
"Delegation of Administration in Active Directory: Achieving Autonomy and Isolation Using Forests, Domains and Organizational Units";
"Active Directory Branch Office Design Guide," which will be updated after Windows .NET Server ships. Kwan recommended that AD planners read this paper even if they don't plan to undertake branch-office deployments. Several general tips and tricks made it into the paper that haven't propagated to Microsoft's other Active Directory white papers.
On tap for the first quarter of 2002 are two more white papers --
"Best Practice Active Directory Design for Exchange 2000" and "Design Considerations for Active Directory: Spanning Firewalls."
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.