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Tech Perspective: Building a better AD

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by techperspective

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For Active Directory, Windows 2000 was only the beginning. According to Gartner, deadlines for Win2K's final release forced Microsoft to release Active Directory before all the ?bells and whistles? were available. But with the release of Windows 2002, Microsoft plans to make up for what Active Directory currently lacks.

Has your organization implemented Active Directory? How has it impacted your organization? What improvements do you think are needed with Active Directory? What plans does your organization have for upgrading to Windows 2002?

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by michaelam

Microsoft seems set to make sure that 'older and working' configurations need to be updated to new hardware, new consultants, new training, new (most of it msoft) software.

What happened to computers making it better for us, instead of better forthem?

by erikthered

Here's a question...if you're not deploying AD, what's your reason for not doing so? I would suspect that most people's answers would be similar to mine...lots of legacy stuff to support. We have client workstations that are still running 3.1, let alone 95. And it looks like Win2002 will put the final nail in the 9x coffin.

I'm all for upgrades and new technology, but AD also just doesn't make that much sense for us. What do you benefit from if your clients use one or two applications, storefew files, and print even less? Group policy is a lot of fun to use, but again, it doesn't fully work unless your clients are running 2000 Professional. Also, I hope MS really pushes for more LDAP interaction in AD. Being able to sync Unix directories with AD would be awesome.

If I were MS, I would have allowed for more backward compatibility. I know we shouldn't be running 3.1, but it happens in a large, autonomous organization. When the IT department isn't a dictatorship, you can't enforcea mass upgrade.

by debunker

"Should I implement Active Directory?" is the wrong question. The right questions are:

A) Do I need a directory system?
B) Which directory system is best?

Anyone considering Active Directory should take a good look at Novell's NDS, since it blows away Active Directory in every meaningful way:

It's cross-platform (Netware, Windows, Linux, LDAP), it's mature, it's reliable, it's efficient, and there are lots of 3rd party apps and utilities that talk to it. It's won many awards and has very favorable reviews from the trade press (for example, its Network Magazine's "Product of the Year" for 2001). And you don't need to wait until after Service Pack 2 of Windows 2002. NDS is already feature-rich and well debugged.

You can get further info at http://www.novell.com/products/nds/

by markguer9

Why chose AD over NDS? NDS is in it's 8th generation fo development. AD is still what a 1.x product?

You'd really have to have a screw loose to choose a first grader (AD) as a directory when you can have an MBA. (NDS)

I especially like the desktop management features of Zenworks 3 for Desktop and Servers. Desktop management down to Win9x (and yes, you can use GPO's and Intelimirror in Win2k) There is no buy and install win2k or you can't manage workstations nonsense from Novell.

Hmmmmm NT app servers running NDS, with no MS marketing of products in the way of you managing your network? Almost sounds too good to be true. Thank goodness it isn't!

by jaredh

I don't believe that Active Directory is a true Directory. Novell's NDS is very scalable. It almost seem like that there is no limit of what the Directory can do or how much networking resources it can track.

However, if you really look at the structure of an AD directory, you will see that it is limited by the old NT domain boundries. AD is really nothing more than the NT 4 domain that is able to contain Organizational Units for better organization. That is a plus, way to go Microsoft, however, all network resources are still limited to that one Domain.

NDS you virtually have no limits. It is cross plat form and I can even cross beyond the NDS tree limits using and DNS rooted NDS tree.

Since Zen can duplicate GPO's, it is NDS all the way in my book.

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