Active Directory Blog

These are the Updates You Are Looking For

Tim Springston — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:59:00 GMT

In this blog post we’re going to go over a few techniques that are a bit old school but will come in handy for understanding how things work even if you ultimately use a great monitoring suite like MOM. Now, there are great articles here and here that...(read more)

September 11th 2001

Tim Springston — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:59:14 GMT

Eight years ago today people had started their day at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and on a few planes. Some were commuting to work destinations and others were already at work. These were people that were working...(read more)

Bulking Up an ADAM Test Instance

Tim Springston — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:40:00 GMT

This week I’ve had the need to do some testing around ADAM (also known by it’s shiny new name of Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services or AD LDS). The tests themselves are not directly relevant to this blog post, but in order for the tests...(read more)

Split IO and Intermittent “File Not Found” Errors

Tim Springston — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:30:00 GMT

There are a whole host of issues that are simply never seen unless you have a large distributed environment. I know that sounds startling but here’s a hypothetical example. Imagine that you are an online retailer and for every identity that you are transacting...(read more)

Testing a Credential Provider

Tim Springston — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:43:36 GMT

Weeks ago I blogged about how single sign on and credential providers work and a scenario you can run into with them. One reader faced a slightly different scenario but was able to apply that topic toward getting his issue resolved. He had installed a...(read more)

Referral Chasing

Tim Springston — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:14:13 GMT

It’s easy to forget that when we say “Directory Services” we are really talking about multiple technologies. I remember when the idea that what we support is so much more than simply a user account repository first hit me. It happened when I first read...(read more)

Important Security Bulletin

Tim Springston — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:21:00 GMT

I wanted to do a quick post on an important security bulletin. It’s Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-018 – Critical . This security update is to address a vulnerability in Active Directory. I’m pasting the Executive Summary below, but I highly recommend...(read more)

Thoughts on Single Sign On and Credential Providers

Tim Springston — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:35:26 GMT

We use the term single sign on (SSO) to describe a variety of behaviors in Windows and other applications where the result is simply to prevent the user from being prompted to provide their credentials again and again; to ideally enter their credentials...(read more)

DCs and Network Address Translation

Tim Springston — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:11:00 GMT

A lot of planning goes into the features and capabilities of each Windows release. Over the years I’ve noticed that there is not a great deal of awareness out in the general public for just how much work and labor goes into a new version of Windows. We’ll...(read more)

When Smartcard Logon Doesn't

Tim Springston — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:48:00 GMT

Authentication is entering every facet of our lives nowadays. It is common to have multiple passwords: passwords for work, home email, and Internet websites to name a few. It’s easy to have a lot of different passwords, and equally easy to use only one...(read more)

Taking Out The Trash

Tim Springston — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:38:00 GMT

There will be times when you have to make big changes in your Active Directory. Sometimes those big changes mean deleting a lot of objects. I’ve personally needed to match customer environments by creating tens of thousands of AD objects just to have...(read more)

Downgrade "Attack"? A little more info

Tim Springston — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:56:00 GMT

I decided that we needed some more detail and to give a walk through scenario on this downgrade attack deal I mentioned a while back in a blog post . As a recap, a customer called in after noticing the events below appearing intermittently but repeatedly-and...(read more)

VSS Snapshots and You

Tim Springston — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:01:09 GMT

I find myself doing blog posts on things that are not frequent enough for most experienced admins to be aware of since it wouldn’t come across their desk often. The reason for that is that in my role I receive the least common unresolved issues...(read more)

Gauging Size Differences in AD Databases

Tim Springston — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:45:00 GMT

We occasionally receive support calls which revolve around the topics of “why is the Active Directory database on DC A different in size than that on DC B?”. It’s easy to dismiss the question out of hand but there are real life scenarios where this can...(read more)

Tabula Rasa

Tim Springston — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:15:00 GMT

I was well and truly stumped a few months ago. I joke that once a year I am flat out wrong, and rarely do I have nothing to say on a subject. The 'once a year I may be flat out wrong' statement may be true simply because after 15 years in the IT industry...(read more)