Friday Mail Sack: VROOM VROOM Edition

Hi folks, Jonathan here again. Ned’s a little busy right now trying to get items off the top shelf of the cabinet, I thought I’d grab some responses he was working on off this desk and put this week’s Mail Sack together. Today we talk about: Auditing group membership changes Account Operators group AllowLegacySrvCall explained… Read more

Friday Mail Sack: Now with 100% more words

Hi folks, Ned here again. It’s been nearly a month since the last Mail Sack post so I’ve built up a good head of steam. Today we discuss FRS, FSMO, Authentication, Authorization, USMT, DFSR, VPN, Interactive Logon, LDAP, DFSN, MS Certified Masters, Kerberos, and other stuff. Plus a small contest for geek bragging rights. Clickity… Read more

DFSR Debug Log Series Wrapup and Downloadable Copies

Ned again. As promised, here is the complete list of links for the recent 21-part DFSR Debug Log analysis series as well as downloadable versions of the series in Word 2007, Word 2003-97, XPS, and PDF formats. I have also included the debug logs I referenced as a separate ZIP file. Understanding DFSR debug logging Understanding DFSR… Read more

The PDCe with too much to do

Hi. Mark again. As part of my role in Premier Field Engineering, I’m sometimes called upon to visit customers when they have a critical issue being worked by CTS, needing another set of eyes. For today’s discussion, I’m going to talk you through, one such visit. It was a dark and stormy night … Well… Read more

Documenting Active Directory Infrastructure the Easy Way

Hi, Ned here. From time to time customers ask us what their options are to document their Active Directory environments – site topologies, domains and trusts, where group policies are linked and what their settings are. Until recently we didn’t have an easy way to do this and they were forced to invest a lot… Read more

Dynamic Ports in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the IANA)

Hi, Dave here. I’m a Support Escalation Engineer in Directory Services out of Charlotte, NC. Recently one of our consultants in the field deployed a Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 domain controller at a branch office to test management scenarios.  After doing this, they discovered that the server was not replicating with domain controllers at… Read more

Two more positions opened

If you live in the US and want to come work with us here in Directory Services support, we have opened two more positions: https://careers.microsoft.com/Search.aspx#&&p4=all&p0=724746&p5=all&p1=all&p2=all&p3=all If you want experience working on the largest, most complex environments in the world, this is the place to be. You will never be bored and you will never stop… Read more

Friday Mail Sack: Carl Sandburg Edition

Hi folks, Jonathan again. Ned is taking some time off visiting his old stomping grounds – the land of Mother-in-Laws and heart-breaking baseball. Or, as Sandburg put it: “Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders” Cool,… Read more

What the heck does /genmigxml do?

Hello guys and gals, Kim Nichols here with my first AskDS post. While deciding on a title, I did a quick search on the word "heck" on our AskDS blog to see if Ned was going to give me any grief. Apparently, we "heck" a lot around here, so I guess it’s all good. 🙂… Read more

Implementing an OCSP responder: Part I – Introducing OCSP

The series: Designing and Implementing a PKI: Part I Design and Planning Designing and Implementing a PKI: Part II Designing and Implementing a PKI: Part III Certificate Templates Chris here again. For those Security Architects and PKI implementers, you may have known that since Windows Server 2008 we have an Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)… Read more