Customer Reviews

Building an Enterprise Active Directory (It-Notes from the Field)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book based on reviews and my experience with it's 'cousin', "Exchange Server 5.5 Notes From the Field". It was more than worth the money spent! After having taken some of the MCP classes on Windows 2000 AD, this built on those skills with real world scenarios and the bandwidth analysis figures for most every kind of network traffic in Windows 2000 will make it a handy reference in the near future. One thing worth noting outside the technical references of this book are the discussions about project management skills and being able to facilitate the numerous teams required to make the migration to AD happen. Other topics covered are: NDS/LDAP integration, AD scpriting, UNIX/DNS migration/co-existance and Exchange Server integration with the ADC.

This is a must-have book for anyone involved in planning and designing AD. It is so good to finally get a book that brings all the bucket loads of technical information together with the real world. After reading this book you'll have a much better understanding of AD and how it relates to your environment. The Compaq case study is especially outstanding. The authors are writting from experience not just giving their version of all the technical information about AD that's out there. This book is definetly well worth the money.

One of the most important thing to remember about the Notes From The Field series books is that they are high-level - very strategic. This book is not a how-to step-by-step. For that, you'll need another source. The Administrator's Handbook is really good. That said, this is a really good book if you're planning an AD deployment, especially if your organization is plagued with growth in many directions and many disparate systems.

What's really great about this book is that it is scenario based. Most of the scenarios are fictitious, but there is an amazing inside look of how Compaq deployed AD after acquiring Tandem and DEC. Also, what I found valuable was separate sections on integrating other systems: NT4 domains, Unix DNS, and Novell NDS. As with all Notes From The Field series, this books provides valuable metrics - how to size the AD database, how much replication traffic to expect, etc. These metrics allow us to gauge bandwidth requirements BEFORE deployment.

Altogether, this book will give you an excellent perspective on assessing what is the best strategy on your migration, what impacts you're going to face, and most importantly, the risks you are taking during the migration. From here, you will have enough information on how to plan your migration. Good luck!

This book provides some good scenarios for designing Active Directory. It also includes some real world information related to Compaq's planning and implementation of Active Directory on their world-wide network. Because Active Directory is so new and SO different, real examples are very useful at this point for Windows NT administrators looking to bridge to Windows 2000.

There are many books coming out now on Active Directory (one month after Win2k product release) and this is one of the good ones so far. Some have an almost clinical approach to AD, what administrators need now (and this book delivers) is REAL information.

I bought this book based on reviews and my experience with it's 'cousin', "Exchange Server 5.5 Notes From the Field". It was more than worth the money spent! After having taken some of the MCP classes on Windows 2000 AD, this built on those skills with real world scenarios and the bandwidth analysis figures for most every kind of network traffic in Windows 2000 will make it a handy reference in the near future. One thing worth noting outside the technical references of this book are the discussions about project management skills and being able to facilitate the numerous teams required to make the migration to AD happen. Other topics covered are: NDS/LDAP integration, AD scpriting, UNIX/DNS migration/co-existance and Exchange Server integration with the ADC.

This book is strictly Microsoft Press throwing propaganda around about how great and wonderful AD is. My company rolled out AD and stopped because it was causing so many problems. This book is only good if you have MS babysitting you while you rollout so you can work around all of the bugs and share in the wonders of Microsoft and AD.