active directory – TechVirtuoso

Changes in Windows Server 2008 R2

January 6th, 2010 at 5:20 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft has posted a little bit of light reading, a document titled Changes in Functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2 that outlines exactly that, the differences between the R2 release and the original 2008 release. It only weighs in at 1.1MB and 211 pages. You can grab it from the Microsoft Download Center in Microsoft Word format or browse the document online through Technet.

Topics such as new features in Active Directory, DNS (including DNSSEC), Group Policy, iSCSI, IIS, clustering, Windows Deployment Server and many other elements are all covered in great detail. If you’re looking at a server wondering if you’d see any significant benefit to upgrading, other then getting the latest guts of Windows, this is a helpful guide.

Windows Server 2008 was released in February 2008, followed by R2 which was released in October 2009. R2 is Microsoft’s first 64-bit only operating system release and is based on many of the same core programming as Windows 7.

Google Apps Directory Sync tool now supports suspending users

September 8th, 2009 at 8:34 AM 2 Comments Frank Owen

Google Apps Small According to the Google Apps Official Blog they have released version 1.6.7 of their Directory Sync tool. This tool allows Administrators to link up Active Directory (or other LDAP servers) to their Google Apps enviroment.

In older versions of the Google Apps Directory Sync the tool will provision new users/groups and sync LDAP directory information. With this new update it will automatically suspend Google accounts if the account is suspended inside the LDAP directory. The Google Apps Directory Sync tool is a one way sync. It only reads information from the directory to replace information inside of Google Apps, it will not sync back to the LDAP directory.

Microsoft delivers Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2

August 27th, 2009 at 9:13 PM 1 Comment Don Smith

This, more then likely, last major update for Microsoft’s e-mail server comes a week after the final beta on Exchange Server 2010 and is said to provide the foundation for transitioning to the upcoming, final release of the 2010 version.

The Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 can be downloaded from this page for free and includes the following:

Enhanced Auditing – New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository.
Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality – A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool.
Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation – The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema.
Public Folder Quota Management – SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
Centralized Organizational Settings – SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
Named Properties cmdlets – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.