This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
Backup of Active Directory
From: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794
An Active Directory domain controller requires regular system state backups to recover from user, hardware, software, or environmental problems. The default useful life of a system state backup is 60 or 180 days, depending on the operating system version and the service pack revision at play during the installation. This useful life is controlled by the tombstone lifetime attribute in Active Directory. At least one domain controller in every domain in the forest should be backed up every tombstone lifetime number of days. Note the value in the Value column. If the value is <not set>, the value is 60 days.
Things to consider when you host Active Directory domain controllers in virtual hosting environments
From: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794
Virtualized DCs in clustered hosts In order for the nodes, disks and other resources on a clustered computer to auto-start, authentication requests from the clustered computer must be serviced by a DC in the cluster computer's domain. To insure that such a DC exists during cluster OS startup, deploy at least 2 domain controllers in the clustered host computer's domain on physical hardware. The physical DCs should be kept online and be network accessible (in DNS + all required ports and protocols) to the clustered hosts. If the only DC’s that can service authentication request during cluster startup reside on a cluster computer that is being restarted, authentication requests will fail and manual recovery steps will be required to make the cluster operational. Note: Always have at least one DC that is on physical hardware so that failover clusters and other infrastructure can start.
Free Active Directory Tools
ADManager Plus presents a complete suite of Active Directory tools that will certainly help the Windows Active Directory administrators and users in efficient handling of all the Active Directory Data. You can download 'RIGHT NOW' the entire suite at absolutely NO COST!.
Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory
From: http://www.solarwinds.com/downloads/
Not a whole lot of help can get same results from going to folder or file and checking permissions
JXplorer The World's Finest Ldap Browser
JXplorer is an open source ldap browser originally developed by Computer Associates' eTrust Directory development lab. It is a standards compliant general purpose ldap browser that can be used to read and search any ldap directory, or any X500 directory with an ldap interface. It is available for immediate free download under a standard OSI-style open source licence.
See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Identifying+Active+Directory+connection+details for details of configuration parameters for Active Directory
Microsoft Active Directory Credentials
From: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Identifying+Active+Directory+connection+details
ad.atlassian.com is the DNS name of our AD server so that's how we worked out CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=ad,DC=atlassian,DC=com. We prefixed each part of the DNS name with DC (which stands for Domain Component). Any folders or subfolders that branch from the server, we prefix with CN, hence CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=ad,DC=atlassian,DC=com (as the Administrator user account sits in the Users folder). Please specify the full name of the account for CN. So, if the user is John Smith, you would use: CN=John Smith,CN=Users,DC=ad,DC=atlassian,DC=com For baseContext, just specify DC=ad,DC=atlassian,DC=com (the DNS name prefixed with DC's)