Windows 2000 Active Directory [Paperback]

Alistair G. Lowe-Norris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2000

The most important change in Windows 2000 is the inclusion of Active Directory, a fully qualified directory service. It's so important that if you're a systems administrator, you're likely to find coming to grips with Active Directory to be one of your biggest headaches. But it doesn't have to be that way, thanks to Windows 2000 Active Directory.

Written by a participant in the Windows 2000 Rapid Deployment Program, Windows 2000 Active Directory delivers the practical, hands-on information you need to manage your site. Instead of filling pages with a screen-by-screen description of the graphical user interface, it focuses on the tasks you need to perform to manage your organization's directory effectively. The heavy emphasis on scripting with the ADSI will help you automate tasks to achieve greater reliability and save time.

Windows 2000 Active Directory is divided into three sections:

• The Basics, which provides an overview of the Active Directory technology and a detailed introduction to AD features.
• Design, which describes mapping your organization's typology into the Active Directory schema; specific topics include the AD namespace and DNS, AD objects such as sites and domains, replication, group policies, and migration issues.
• Scripting, which covers the powerful capabilities of the Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), including ADSI's use with ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), Active Server Pages (ASP), and Visual Basic (VB).

Windows 2000 Active Directory is a practical guide to the new technology for the overworked system or network administrator. Whether you're working regularly in the Windows 2000 environment or just evaluating Windows 2000 in order to understand the design issues involved, this book builds the solid foundation you need to understand Active Directory and use it effectively.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Windows 2000 Active Directory is a notably authoritative and engaging guide to the Microsoft Active Directory (AD) for any administrator or developer making the move to the new Windows and this powerful directory standard.

Articulate and technically astute, the author comes across as a trusted advisor, providing an expert's view of designing the layout of your company's Active Directory schema. In realistic terms, he shows you how AD can coexist with Unix directories. The book not only provides a collection of screen shots (though there are hands-on tutorials for specific tasks) but also a nicely in-depth tour of what Internet directories are and what advantages Active Directory offers. Case studies on sample domains and organization units (OUs) for sample companies, including a model global corporation, will help you cope with the design of even the most complex directories. Hints for limiting "domains" and favoring the more flexible "organizational units" (OUs) will also help you think in Windows 2000 terms.

Later sections of the book delve into Active Directory Services Interface (ASDI) scripting using Windows Script Host (WSH), Visual Basic, and even ASPs for browser-based administration. The tips and sample scripts for a variety of common administrative tasks, such as adding new users, changing passwords, and the like, assume very little programming background. This focus on the practical side of administration rounds out an extremely useful and technically savvy guide to Windows 2000 that can definitely simplify the life of any administrator, manager, or developer upgrading to the latest Windows. --Richard Dragan

About the Author

Alistair G. Lowe-Norris is an Architectural Enterprise Strategy Consultant for Microsoft UK. He worked for Leicester University as the project manager and technical lead of the Rapid Deployment Program for Windows 2000, responsible for rolling out one of the world's largest deployments of Windows 2000 preceding release of the final product. Since 1998 he has been the technical editor and a monthly columnist for the Windows Scripting Solutions magazine and a technical editor and author for Windows & .NET Magazine (previously Windows NT Magazine and Windows 2000 Magazine).

Product Details

• Paperback: 648 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565926382
• ISBN-13: 978-1565926387
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,415,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Coverage of Key Technology, February 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Windows 2000 Active Directory (Paperback)

This is a truly excellent book. Written by the person who headed up the largest Windows 2000 deployment (in Europe) to date, it not only covers the 'What' of Active Directory, but the 'How' and 'Why'. This includes not only the technical aspects of Active Directory but also the operational and business aspects that are all too rarely addressed in this kind of book,<consultantbabble intensity="religious fervour">but that absolutely have to be dealt with if any kind of ROI is to be realised from this technology</consultantbabble>.

If that isn't enough, the last part of the book shows how to roll your own scripts for adding users, querying the Active Directory etc.. Or as I prefer to think of it, repetitive tasks that you don't really want to go near the gui for. I have this book down as having 585 pages of solid fact, no filler, all examples kept short and focussing on the point in question.

This is an example of how technical books should be written - lots of hard fact with unambigous examples in a well-written style. If you have to go near Windows 2000 & the Active Directory (and I suspect one or two people may be in this position) then buy this book.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half-decent combo book on AD and scripting, August 8, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Active Directory, Second Edition (Paperback)

Update: I finished reading the book and though I still basically feel the same about the AD part, I have found that the scripting part is not too bad *IF* you have some prior scripting/programming experience (which I do), particularly with VB or VBS (which I do). Some of the scripts I have been able to modify and use in my job as a sys admin. Now, overall, I will bump my rating up from 2 stars to 3 stars. $31.47 with free shipping is not a bad deal for a half-decent book on AD with the bonus of several hundred pages on scripting. I guess you cant have your cake and eat it too  either you get a full-fledged AD book and a separate scripting book or you get this one and it does a half-decent job covering both topics. Additionally, the author, Robbie Allen, does respond to questions via e-mail in a prompt manner.
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First off, this book is not for beginners. Do not buy this book if you have no experience with or knowledge of Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Active Directory. That said, here is my review:

I'm more than 2/3 done reading this book and so far I cannot recommend it. The book is not practical enough for a real sys admin to use. For example, the section on sites mentions site transitivity a few times, but no where in that section could I find any instructions on how to actually activate or deactivate that feature. After researching the issue myself, I found that all there is to that is a simple check box. Also, the sections on replication, GCs, and DNS needs more "meat."

A few of the examples used in the book are just totally absurd and there are numerous little typographical errors throughout. Also, the ordering of the chapters are counterintuitive and some topics, such as GPOs, are covered in different, non-sequential, chapters of the book (the author does explain why that was done).

Right now I am finishing up the scripting section and have found numerous inconsistencies with the sample code and the references to it. In one example, the author states that the code will update phone numbers while the code is actually updating (or attempts to update) pager numbers. Contrary to the author's statement that you don't need previous programming experience to learn scripting with this book, some of the examples involve functions and other programming techniques that are way too advanced for novice scripters.

Conclusion:
If you want a practical book on AD, then get one geared towards MCSE certification - probably from Sybex. I even found the old Exam Cram book on AD to be rather useful and informative. I think the main goal of this book was to help the reader design an AD infrastructure, but it failed at that, as there was not enough "meat" in the book to cover that, and some of the examples were too absurd. The only part of the book that I did like was its decent explanation of AD object and attribute classes.

As for the scripting part, it's mediocre thus far. I've been supplementing that with the very well written and easy to follow Windows 2000 Scripting Guide, (...).

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent in depth info! Not for the newbie., August 5, 2001

By 

Christopher M. Buechler (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Windows 2000 Active Directory (Paperback)

I have to agree with the majority of the reviewers that this is a wonderful book. A must read for serious 2000 Admins.

In response to the previous two bad reviews...

To the one who thought it was too technical. The reading would be hard to get through if you didn't have a solid background in Microsoft networking and Windows 2000 Server. If you don't know what a domain is, this book is not for you. If you don't understand what objects are, this book is not for you. Explaining that stuff would be a waste of time for the targeted audience. This book is not "Active Directory for Dummies" if such a thing even exists. This book assumes, as it should, that you have the base knowledge required to understand the depths of AD. I already had my 2000 MCSE before I even picked up this one. (For AD basics to intermediate skills, I used the Osborne book Windows 2000 Directory Services Administration. Another great book! **EDIT 7/24/02** Amazon has the title of this book mistyped as "Windows 2000 Directory Services Infrastructure". A couple of people have e-mailed me about having problems finding the book. The direct link is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/007212380X/)

This is not a beginner's manual. This is an in depth approach to AD, and does a wonderful job.

As for the one who said the book was based on RC 3. There were some changes from RC3 to the release version of Active Directory. However, this book has had at least 3 reprints with updates, and this has been mostly corrected in the version I have, dated November 2000 (I believe this is the most recent reprint)... That is a VERY short list for a techinical book.

If you're clueless when it comes to Microsoft networking and the basics of Windows 2000, don't pick this one up. If you know Microsoft networking and Windows 2000, this book is a MUST READ!!