Anderson Patricio Get-news Blog : Active Directory

Single-label Domain Names and Exchange Server 2007 SP1 (Part 2)

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:48:08 GMT

This is a follow-up to an earlier post: Single-label Domain Names and Exchange Server 2007 SP1. Please refer to it for background information on this issue.

After investigating Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 installed in an Active Directory domain with a Single-label Domain (SLD) name, Microsoft has changed the Setup prerequisite rule for SLDs from an Error to a Warning, thereby allowing Service Pack 1 installation to continue in SLD environments.

There are a few items that I want to point out:

Not a recommended configuration
While Exchange 2007 SP1 is supported with SLDs, the Exchange product team's view is that SLDs are not a recommended configuration. While we will allow installation of Exchange 2007 SP1 in an SLD, we strongly recommend that you take step to move your organization out of this configuration.
Not fully tested
Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 SP1 have not been fully tested in SLDs. The Exchange team investigated known issues and determined that there were sufficient workarounds to safely allow installation of SP1 to continue; however, there may be unknown issues that could arise from operating Exchange 2007 in an SLD environment.
Deprecated in the next version of Exchange
The next version of Exchange will not support Active Directory domains with single-label domain names. Similarly, upgrades of Exchange servers currently deployed in single-label domains will not be supported. In this case, "next version" means the next major release of Exchange Server. Customers that intend to deploy the next version of Exchange must use fully qualified domain names.
Documentation being updated
Currently, the existing TechNet documentation states that SLDs are not supported in Exchange 2007. We are working to change the documentation to reflect that SLDs are supported but not recommended configurations. The updated documentation is expected to be published on TechNet as part of the March 2008 document refresh in early March.
Exchange 2007 does not support Domain Rename, and there are currently no plans for a Domain Rename Fixup Tool for Exchange 2007
The possibility of creating a domain rename fixup tool for Exchange 2007, similar to the one that was written for Exchange 2003, was discussed internally. The decision is that there will not be a similar tool written for Exchange 2007. The Domain Rename Fixup tool written for Exchange 2003 is not compatible with Exchange 2007, and should not be used in Exchange 2007 environments.

Technorati : Exchange 2007 SP1, setup changes, single-label domain names

Modifying User’s attributes using Windows 2008

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:56:09 GMT

Hello Folks,

Windows 2008 has a lot of new features, one of those is very useful for us (Exchange guys). Now, we don't need to use ADSIEdit.msc to change the values, we can do that through a new tab called Attribute Editor that can be found in the User's properties.

We can also filter as the same way that we used to do in AdsiEdit.msc (Only fields with values, mandatory, optional etc..). We can be editing the specifc attribute in the same Tool (Active Directory Users and Computers, DSA.msc)

Best Regards,
Anderson Patricio

Technorati : Adsiedit.msc, Attribute Editor, Windows 2008
Del.icio.us : Adsiedit.msc, Attribute Editor, Windows 2008
Ice Rocket : Adsiedit.msc, Attribute Editor, Windows 2008

Managing Active Directory through PowerShell

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 24 May 2007 05:11:00 GMT

Hello folks,

Quest (www.quest.com) has released a free tool called ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory that is a set of PowerShell commands (CMDLETs). Inside of this tool we have got some cmdlets to manage the Active Directory environment, here are the list of cmdlets available in the free tool:

CONNECT-QADSERVICE
DISCONNECT-QADSERVICE
GET-QADUSER
SET-QADUSER
NEW-QADUSER
GET-QADGROUP
NEW-QADGROUP
GET-QADGROUPMEMBER
ADD-QADGROUPMEMBER
REMOVE-QADGROUPMEMBER
GET-QADCOMPUTER
GET-QADOBJECT
SET-QADOBJECT
NEW-QADOBJECT
REMOVE-QADOBJECT
CONVERT-QADATTRIBUTEVALUE

You can get it here: http://www.quest.com/activeroles-server/arms.aspx
Ps.: Registration will be required

Tomorrow, we will be visualizing the new tool called PowerGUI, if you don't like to write cmdlets that will be your perfect tool :)

Best Regards,
Anderson Patricio