| Making the move to Windows 2000--or thinking about it? Here's the information you need to assess the impact that Active Directory Services (ADS) will have on your network and your business. Mastering Active Directory explains the concepts behind directory services, how ADS is implemented within Windows 2000, and how it interoperates with internetworking technologies. You'll also learn how to plan and design your ADS implementation, master administration tasks within a directory-based network, know how ADS impacts other BackOffice servers will be, and understand how to use ADS effectively in your organization to make networked life easier for both network administrators and network users.
Over the last few years, Microsoft Windows NT 4 has become the
hottest “new” technology to hit the networking market. This has always surprised
me, since the networking portion of Windows NT 4 is based on a
domain model that is over 10 years old. In other words, Microsoft’s newest
technology isn’t really all that new. That has changed, however, with the
release of the newest version of NT—Windows 2000 Server.
Windows 2000 Server moves Microsoft networking away from the dated
(and limiting) domain-based architecture of earlier releases and toward the
true directory service–based architecture necessary in today’s complex networks.
Microsoft provides this service through the addition of Active Directory
Services (ADS), an open, standards-based, X.500-compliant, LDAPaccessible
network directory. (Don’t worry—we’ll talk about X.500, LDAP,
and what seems like an endless list of industry acronyms throughout this
book.)
ADS provides the power and flexibility you need in today’s changing computer
world, but it provides these at a price. A large portion of that price will
be the steep learning curve that administrators will need to climb in order to
fully understand and utilize the potential of Microsoft Windows 2000 and
Active Directory Services. |
