Directory Services/Active Directory

Windows Server 2008 R2 (and Windows 7) availability

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:59:32 GMT

Hyper-Excited: Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 will be finalized in the second half of July, which is when they will become available for Partners and MSDN a.s.o., and broadly available (Stores, on new PCs a.s.o.) at the End of October!!!

Windows Server Division Weblog:
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/06/02/windows-server-2008-r2-rtm-and-general-availability.aspx

Windows 7 Teamblog:
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/02/the-date-for-general-availability-ga-of-windows-7-is.aspx

Woohooo!!!

A funny / sad comment about the economy

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:25:13 GMT

At TechEd USA in Los Angeles last week, Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President of Windows Business at Microsoft, made a comment which was funny but also sad:

I’m a technologist, so I can’t tell you where the economy will be in 6 month. A bad message is – a economist can’t tell you either.

Contacts displayed as containers

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:58:01 GMT

At TechEd I was staffing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory-Booth. We had a lot of interesting questions, scenarios and discussions there.

One interesting issue was a customer who asked us why his contacts in Active Directory are being displayed as containers and how he can take it off. Actually this took us some time to look into it. He had two forests – when he was targeting Active Directory-Users and –Computers against one forest, his contacts were displayed as containers (meaning there was a plus-symbol right next to it and you were able to see it in the tree, with no objects underneath). On the other forest the contacts weren’t displayed as container.

So we had to figure out what’s going on there. And what I’ve actually found is quite interesting, and I believe that more companies are running into this, so I found it worth documenting it on the web.

So what’s going on is that we found out the one forest was extended with the Windows Server 2008 Schema (adprep /forestprep) but the customer is still running Windows Server 2003 DCs. In the Schema of Windows Server 2003 by default there are not any objects who can be “underneath” a contact [1]. In the Windows Server 2008 Schema there are two new objects, which can be underneath a contact. Those are ms-net-ieee-80211-grouppolicy and ms-net-ieee-8023-grouppolicy. You can check this by querying the attribute allowedChildClassesEffective on a contact – this is a constructed attribute which is telling you which objects may be underneath the current object, more specifically which attributes the currently logged on user can create underneath the current object (taken permissions into credit). [2]

dsquery * “cn=My Contact,ou=…,dc=…” –scope base –properties allowedChildClassesEffective

In Powershellv2 (which ships with Windows Server 2008 R2 and in RSAT for Win7 (need to install, see [3]) you can use the following command (make sure that the Active Directory-Module is loaded, either use the shortcut or import-module ActiveDirectory):

get-adobject -identity "cn=My Contact,ou=…,dc=…" -properties allowedChildClassesEffective

In Active Directory-Users and –Computers there is an option in the view-menu which allows you to specify whether you’d like to see users, computers and groups as containers or not. In the version which ships with Windows Server 2008 (or is in the Remote Server Administration Tools of Vista and above) this setting is extended to behave on contacts as well. This setting is local to the computer and overrides any settings in the schema.

So apparently Active Directory-Users and –Computers is querying the schema, sees that contacts may contain other objects and is displaying them as containers, whether you’ve set the view-option or not (in Windows Server 2003 R2 and before) because is doesn’t apply to contacts. This is fixed with the versions which are shipping in Windows Server 2008 or RSAT for Vista and higher.

So if you extended the schema to Windows Server 2008 (R2), but your management consoles are still running on Windows Server 2003 (R2) / Windows XP and prior you’ll see contacts as containers.

There would be a workaround – there is a setting in the display specifiers which is modifying this behavior. It’s in cn=contact-display,cn=409,cn=display specifies,cn=configuration,dc… (your forest-root domain DN, you’ll also have to exchange the 409 with your language version, where 409 equals US-English, 407 would be German a.s.o.). So the workaround is to navigate to the contact-display object, then change the Value for the “treatAsLeaf”-attribute to TRUE (by default it’s <not set>) [4].

While this workaround will work, I wouldn’t actually recommend it, in my eyes the “bug” is not annoying enough that you’d change something in the configuration context. On the other hand, this setting is quite unimportant. So it’s up to you, however as soon as you start working with the Windows Server 2008 (R2) Management Consoles this wont annoy you anymore. So keep migrating ;)

Ulf

---

[1] It’s actually not defined in the object what kind of objects can be underneath, but on the child-objects what possible superior it may have.

[2] IMHO Scripting or Programming Best-Practice would mean to query an object prior to creating a child-object for allowedChildClassesEffective to make sure that the current user has the right to create the object.

[3] The Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 include the Powershell Module for Active Directory. If you open the generic Powershell-Windows you’ll have to import-module ActiveDirectory first (there’s a shortcut installed in Administrative Tools which starts Powershell with this module loaded instead. Note that the PS-Provider relies on the Active Directory Webservice (ADWS), so you need one Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller. ADWS is also announced to be available as Out-of-band Release/Hotfix for Windows Server 2003 and 3008, however this is currently not available. Win7 and WS2k8R2 are also just Release Candidates at this point, however I already want to mention how to do things using PSv2 since we have to get used to this in the AD-World (and it’s pretty impressive actually what you can do with it easily).

[4] Boolean Values in Active Directory are kind of weird – there are three states as opposed to two – either TRUE, FALSE or <not set> if the attribute is empty. Also the reason for a boolean value in general is to keep space limited, you only need one bit usually. However in AD the String of the Word TRUE or FALSE is stores.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 availability announced for the holiday season

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:05:10 GMT

I do have to say that I’m super-excited – or as Mark Russinovich tries to introduce the term … “Hyper-Excited” (Mark: would this be Hyper-E? – just kidding).

Bill Veghte (Sr. Vice President, Windows Business, Microsoft) and Ian McDonald (General Manager for Windows Server at MS) have introduced this morning at TechEd in Los Angeles the availability for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 before the holiday season, meaning that Ian’s kids will be able to get the server for christmas .

I do love those OSs and their new features, working with them on all my machines and not using anything else anymore (apart from customer machines where they make me too). So I’ll blog more about this, and about TechEd especially during the week.

Can’t wait for Christmas now!

Rumors about AD-Snapshots

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:17:43 GMT

I've recently heard /read some rumors about AD-Snapshots. As I wrote before in Timetraveling Active Directory the new feature of Active Directory in Windows Server 2008 - AD-Snapshots or "the Database Mounting Tool" (how Microsoft calls the technology) how to look at a snapshot / backup can help you recovering data from older states of your Active Directory. I've also spoken about this and demoed it in my "A Directory Services Geek's View on Active Directory Recovery in Windows Server 2008" which was so far presented at TechEd Europe 2007 in Barcelona, the German Windows Server 2008 Launch in Frankfurt, the Directory Experts Conference 2008 in Chicago, TechEd US 2008 in Orlando, and which will pre presented at ICE-Lingen (in Lingen at the end of August. I've also wrote articles about this in the IT-Administrator in March and April this year.

So some rumors:

a mounted Database will show you all partitions, however Microsoft only supports the domain partition, the other partitions are not supported.
As far as I know it is not supported to recover from snapshots at all, however it works but you have to script. As I mentioned the process is:

Creating a snapshot with NTDSUtil (ntdsutil -> snapshot -> Activate Instance NTDS -> Create)
or
Backing up the systemstate (wbadmin start systemstaterecovery -backuptarget:s:)
Mounting a snapshot in the filesystem (ntdsutil -> snapshot -> list all -> mount xyz)
or
Restoring the systemstate to an alternative location (wbadmin start systemstaterecovery –version:07/07/2008-14:41 –recoveryTarget:e:\recovery\)
Starting the snapshot / restored NTDS.dit as Read-only directory (dsamain -dbpath c:\$snap...\ntds\ntds.dit -ldapport 10000)
Reanimating the tombstone of the user(s) in question
Getting back additional data out of the snapshot and into production using scripts or ldifde.exe, see my post about converting the LDIF: Converting LDIF-Files
Fixing backlinks: This is not easily done using LDIFs. Remember that Backlinks are not writeable, so you have to retrieve the backlink, then update the forward-link in question. Using LDIFDE this would be hard to accomblish. Most of the time we mostly care about Group Memberships, then we can also use a one-line commandline:

dsget user cn=Ulf,ou=Demo,dc=xyz,dc=com -s localhost:10002 -memberof 
  | dsmod group -addmbr cn=Ulf,ou=Demo,dc=xyz,dc=com

you could retrieve information from other partitions, but you'll also have to script it and be aware that it's not supported from Microsoft
One rumor I've recently read: Using ntdsutil to perform an authoritative restore without rebooting in Directory Service Restore Mode. This is also not supported. The only supported way to perform an authoritative restore is in DSRM. However I've talked to some of the developers, and they said it'll work as long as you are rebooting instantly after performing the authoritative restore (to make sure that caches and everything is cleaned), so you can do it without DSRM (stopping AD, performing the non-authoritative and the authoritative restore, then rebooting the machine without restarting AD prior). However it's not supported!!!!
There are tools out there to help you recovering from a snapshot:

If you speak German and you are unable to attend ICE you can see my session at the German Launchevent Online. If you attend ICE come there, the session has been updated .

How many Infrastructure Masters do you have?

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:09:09 GMT

There are certain roles in Active Directory - which is a multi-master directory (meaning that every DC can write if he's member of the domain) - which need a "single-master", someone who takes care that certain things are only performed once and they are unique.

As we should know, there are five of those "Flexible Single Master Operations"-Masters (FSMOs) (however let's not get into the discussion why they are called "Flexible" - back in the NT5-beta-days (beta of Windows 2000) they were even called "Floating"). Two which are unique in the forest, and three which are unique in the domain.

FSMOs per forest:

Schema-Master: guess what - someone has to be responsible updating the schema and making sure that it's unique. What a surprise!
Domain Naming Master: Same for certain names in the forest, which need to be unique.

FSMOs per domain:

PDC-Emulator: the most complex and most important role. Not only reliable to replicate AD-content to NT4-BDCs (not in Windows Server 2008 anyways), but the PDC-Emulator is also the last instance of password changes, he's targeted by the Group Policy Object Editor, takes care of AD-integrated DFS-Namespace, the PDC-E of the forest-root-domain is responsible for providing the right time to all members of the forest, a.s.o. He's important, and you need him even if you don't have NT4 in your domain anymore (hopefully - it's gray-haired by now).
RID-Master: My favorite role, since he reminds me on your account managers at the Octoberfest. Every year we take a lot of customers to the Octobeerfest . Someone is assigned per table to get beer-coupons for everyone. If he's running out he has to go to the account manager responsible to get another stack. The RID-Master is doing the same. He's making sure that RID (the last part of the security-identifier) is unique per domain by giving every DC a stack of RIDs to issue, and if he's running out of RIDs (meaning that his stack is half-empty / half-full) he's requesting the next RID-Pool.
Infrastructure-Master: He's the one who makes sure that cross-domain memberships are being taken care of (what a sentence). So what he's really doing is comparing group-memberships and other cross-domain links against other domains (in the GC), and if some link is targeted at another domain in the forest he's taking care to create a phantom so that all DCs know what the link-target is. Why is that - lets get out of the "bullet-points".

If we look at the AD-Database (which is not being replicated - AD does take care of replication - the database is the local store per domain controller) there are two major tables in the database: the data-table and the link-table. Every row in the data-table is a single object, which is referenced by the "Distinguished Name Tag (DNT)". This is a unique ID for each object in the database (per domain controller - across domain controllers it is very unlikely that the same object has the same DNT - as I said - replication is on the application layer and not on the Database-Layer). However, there is the link-table. The Link-Table is taking care of all links. So all group-members vs. user-member-ofs a.s.o. are stored there with their DNT. If the DC needs to enumerate group members, he's simply searching in the link-table for the "link-source" and enumerates their targets, if he's looking for the member-of information of a user he's searching for the link-destination and enumerates their sources. Sounds logical? Hopefully.

But remember that groups (such as other links) may contain objects of other domains. How would we be able to reference those, they don't have a row and don't have a DNT in the domain database. That's where the Infrastructure-Master kicks in. He's taking care to create phantom-objects of objects which are referenced in a domain but which are from a foreign domain. So those objects are being created as "small version of those objects" in the domain where they are referenced. They are even smaller than the partitial attribute set which makes it into the Global Catalog. I've already blogged about the Global Catalog vs. Infrastructure Master dependency, so for this discussion go there. Also you can look at the Knowledgebase-Article "KB 248047: Phantoms, tombstones and the infrastructure master" on TechNet. The last parts about cross-domain references are the interesting ones in this context.

So how many FMSO-Role owners do we have in our forest?

There is one Schema-Master.
There is one Domain Naming Master.
The number of PDC-Emulators is the same than the number of domains.
The number of RID-Masters is the same than the number of domains.
The number of Infrastructure Masters is ...

How many infrastructure masters do we have?

Most would say "as much as we have domains as well". Wrong!

And that's the interesting part - we do have one Infrastructure Master per domain, that's correct. But - remember that Windows Server 2003 introduced Application Partitions? We would be able to have link-references (they could even be cross partitions, not even domains) in an application partition as well. However if the "Domain Infrastructure Master" wouldn't hold a copy of the application partition (which has a separate and configurable replication scope - one of our customers has one application partition per site but cross-domain), how would he be able to take care of those cross-partition references? He wouldn't be able to, there's no way he could do this.

Therefor we have one infrastructure master per domain, plus one per application partition. So by default, if you have a Windows Server 2003 or higher forest with the default application partitions (for DNS, the forestDnsZones and domainDnsZones), let's assume five domains, then you have:

1 Schema Master
1 Domain Naming Master
5 PDC-Emulators
5 RID-Masters
11 Infrastructure Masters (5 Domain Infrastructure Masters + 1 for the forestDnsZones + 5 for the domainDnsZones of each domain - however they may reside on the same DC)

Where can I see the application partitions infrastructure masters?

To see where the IMs of the application partitions reside, you have to go into active directory with any tool like adsiedit.msc, ldp or whatever you prefer. Connect to the application partition, navigate to the cn=Infrastructure-object underneath the application partitions root, and look at the fSMORoleOwner-Attribute. It's pointing to the NTDSSettings-Object of the server who currently holds the role. You can also use dsquery to do this:

dsquery * cn=Infrastructure,dc=domainDnsZones,dc=example,dc=com -attr fSMORoleOwner

If you want to figure out what partitions you have in the forest, you can use the following command:

dsquery * cn=partitions,cn=configuration,dc=example,dc=com -attr nCName

And if we only want application partitions, we add the filter (systemflags=5) which means that we are looking for all partitions which don't replicate to the global catalog, which is the case for application partitions (Note: App-IMs may reside on GCs therefore ):

dsquery * cn=partitions,cn=configuration,dc=example,dc=com -filter "(systemflags=5)" -attr nCName

And for those of you who like small one-line commands, they can figure out who the infrastructure master is for all application partitions (as said, all in one line):

for /f %i in ('dsquery * "cn=partitions,cn=configuration,dc=example,dc=com"
-filter "(systemflags=5)" -attr nCName ^| find /v "nCName"') do
@echo %i && dsquery * cn=Infrastructure,%i -attr fSMORoleOwner

Have fun

But why do I care about application partitions infrastructure masters?

Actually I had a conversation about this in Redmond a couple years ago, that there's a infrastructure master for every application partition. I had actually forgotten about this, until a collegue of mine told me about an issue when preparing your forest for Windows Server 2008 Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODCs).

If you want to prepare your forest for Windows Server 2008 Read-Only Domain Controllers, you have to run "adprep /rodcprep". This command is setting permissions so that RODCs are able to replicate content. RODCs are not in the Domain Controllers Group, so by default they don't have sufficient permissions. Since RODCs may hold Active Directory-integrated DNS-Zones, they are also required to have those permissions on the application partition. Since we cannot be sure that a certain DC holds all application partitions - for domainDnsZones that's granted if you have multiple domains - and since it's not granted that the domains Infrastructure Master holds the application partitions in this domain (e.g. if he's not DNS-Server, he doesn't hold the domainDnsZones of his own domain as well) Microsoft decided to target the IMs with this command (we are still at "adprep /rodcprep").

Many companies have either reinstalled DCs or took DCs down. One of the DCs which has often been taken down is the first DC in the forest, either because he's being updated from a previous OS or because it was old hardware, hardware-failures a.s.o. However, the first DC in the forest also holds the application partition infrastructure master (let's introduce the acronym AP-IM and D-IM, second for the domains infrastructure master) for the forestDnsZones and for the domainDnsZones of the forest root domain. When administrators took down those DCs, they moved FSMOs because they know it's the right thing to do. However, if you use either the MMCs or ntdsutil to move the FSMOs (KB 324801: How to view and transfer FSMO roles in Windows Server 2003 and KB 255504: Using Ntdsutil.exe to Seize or Transfer FSMO Roles to a Domain Controller) the AP-IM will not be moved automatically.

So it is very likely that a company has application partitions which do not have an infrastructure master, because the server is offline/removed and the role hasn't been transferred.

Is it critical if the application partition infrastructure master is not available anymore?

No, in most cases it's not. E.g. the default application partitions are used by DNS only, and only store the DNS-Zones and the dnsNode-Objects which reflect the records. They don't use links, therefor there's no need for an infrastructure master at those application partitions. However, you need to fix this for sure if you want to introduce Windows Server 2008 Read-Only Domain Controllers to be able to run "adprep /rodcprep". You can either do this manually by simply changing the attribute fSMORoleOwner of the cn=Infrastructure,dc=<your-application-partitions-dn>-Object with the distinguishedName of the NTDSSettings-Object of the server who's supposed to hold the role. The issue is also described in KB 949257: Error message when you run the "Adprep /rodcprep" command in Windows Server 2008: "Adprep could not contact a replica for partition DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=Contoso,DC=com" which also provides you with a VBScript to change the role owner.

IT-Administrator in Heidelberg

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:14:52 GMT

I'm writing for the German magazine IT-Administrator. Recently they've published an series about Windows Server 2008 and another about Active Directory-Recovery (in Windows Server 2008), and in August they'll publish an article about Hyper-V from me.

Recently they've asked me if I could present a half-day Workshop in Heidelberg. Last Thursday we did this, and the day was exciting and interesting. A lot of good questions, a very interested audience, and I really enjoyed being there. Here are two pictures (and no - I wasn't just sitting around - for some reason they took the pictures while I was demoing AD-Snapshots):

Why Clients don't (need to) understand the concept of Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODC)

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:08:56 GMT

Hi There,

just back from TechEd, it's time for some technical posts. So one of the questions I got very often is what you need in your infrastructure to deploy read-only Domain Controllers. Along with that question goes what Client-Version of the Operating System is needed that they are able to authenticate with an RODC.

What is a RODC?
The Read-Only Domain Controller is a new concept in Windows Server 2008. While a regular Domain Controller allows updates to the domain contents on each DC, an RODC is only receiving updates from Full DCs. He will not take any write requests. He is further not replicating any password or cached secrets. This distinguishes him from a NT4 Backup Domain Controller (BDC), who had all passwords stored locally. Also he is - in every other means - a full domain controller and LDAP-Server, also stores all GPOs in Sysvol. To allow offline operations (when the WAN to the RODC-Site is failing) Administrators are able to configure if certain users passwords are allowed to be cached, by putting them in a group which is in the allow list. There is also a group whos passwords are denied to be cached, even if they are in the allow list. List group contains by default certain administrative accounts, such as domain administrators, enterprise administrators, the operators groups a.s.o.
The RODC is built for the unsecured Branch-Office or for the DMZ/perimeter network, where you are either unable to ensure the physical security of a DC or where the environment is untrusted.

So the first thing you need is to prepare your existing infrastructure. The RODC is a Domain Controller, so you need to update the schema. Further the RODC needs some assistance from a Full-DC, so you need to deploy enough Full-DCs to allow replication to the RODCs. For most environments one Full DC should be sufficient (RODCs only replicate inbound, not outbound, which also increases performance and decreases replication traffic), however I'd always prefer a second one to allow redundancy. To prepare the schema you need to perform the forestprep and domainprep operations (adprep /forestprep and adprep /domainprep), if you want to deploy RODCs you also need to perform a adprep /rodcprep in every domain of the forest to allow a Global Catalog on the RODC. However you do not need a Windows Server 2008 DC in Domains where you don't want to deploy RODCs. However two: there are other reasons why you should deploy Windows Server 2008 .

But how do RODCs perform certain functions? They can take the role of a Global Catalog server and of a DNS-Server. If a client (member-servers might also be clients to Active Directory, even the domain controller itself - his OS - might be a client to AD) tries to write against an RODC the RODC is using LDAP write referrals to tell the Client that he is supposed to write to a different DC (a Full Windows Server 2008 DC). LDAP referrals have been defined e.g. in RFC 2551 back in 1997, so LDAP-applications should be able to follow them.

And how is a logon performed against the RODC? The user is actually performing the logon against the RODC. The RODC is looking in his local AD to verify whether or not he's able to verify the users password. If he has no cached copy of the password he is forwarding the request to a full DC. Further he is requesting the full DC to replicate the password down to him, the full DC checks the allow- and deny-lists and decides whether or not to replicate the password down. The full DC further issues a kerberos ticket for the client. The RODC is informed that the client may log on, and the RODC is issuing his own kerberos ticket for the client. All other things of the logon process, such as compiling the token with group membership information and pulling down group policies is done against the RODC. If the user logs on another time, and the password is cached on the RODC, the RODC does not need to contact the full DC and is able to process the logon-request even if the WAN is offline.

The other thing are DNS updates. Clients in the Branch Office (or Remote Office how we prefer to call it nowadays) are supposed to use the local DNS-Server. However they might update their DNS-Records, which is totally acceptable. But if the RODC is not writeable, and DNS is stored in AD, and actually the DNS-Zones on a RODC are not writeable too, how are those updates performed. This answer is actually quite simple. We Windows Admins got spoiled over time, since our DNS-Servers - when the zone is stored in AD - allow updates on any DNS-Server which is also a DC and holds a copy of the AD-integrated Zone. However think back to the concepts of DNS. We always had a single primary DNS-Server who was able to write updates, and multiple secondaries who were just able to answer to queries. Clients who want to write in DNS had to request a SOA (start of authority) Record for the zone they want to write into. Full DCs who are DNS-Servers with an AD-integrated replica of the Zone were always answering with themselves as SOA (the SOA-Record only allows one Server, and there is only one SOA per Zone, as opposed to Nameserver (NS) Records where are multiple per DNS-Zone). RODCs don't have an SOA for themselves, they hold a SOA which is stating the Name of a Full DC. So that is simple, Clients who want to write into DNS are still (same technology as in the 80th) querying the zone for it's SOA, and then they are contacting the Server which is stated in the SOA to write the update. But RODCs provide some intelligence as well - if a client was contacting them for the SOA they wait for a moment to allow the client to update his record, then they are requesting a single-object-replication from the Full DC for the Clients DNS-Record so that the DNS-Information at the clients site is updated as soon as possible, while any other site will receive it with the regular replication.

So Clients / Memberservers and other machines should be able to run against RODCs. However, there are certain things which might affect this statement:

The Read-only partitial attribute set (RO-PAS): It is possible to define in the schema that certain attributes should not be replicated to RODCs. However the application needs to be aware of this, since those requests are not referred to a full DC.
Replication latencies: if an application is performing a write request it will be redirected to a full DC. If the application tries to read that data again before replication occurs, the RODC will still return the old data. If you want to make sure that your applications write against RODCs be aware of this issue, and look for a writeable DC when you perform write/readback-operations or make sure that you are not using write/readback (but stick against the RODC if you only perform read operations, otherwise you will slow down your application since it's always crossing the WAN).
Firewalls: especially in DMZ-Scenarios your clients might not have a connectivity to a full DC, so write referrals will fail. Make sure that you don't need write requests in those scenarios.
WAN-Offline: write operations will also fail in this scenario

I hope I was able to get some lights behind RODCs, theres a lot of more information available online, e.g. look at the following page: Application Compatibility with RODCs

Ulf

Back to live

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:53:00 GMT

I haven't blogged in a while. A long while. I've been through major changes in my live. Readjusting. Reloading. Sometimes you need to reevaluate things, in technology and in live. Being stable doesn't equal avoiding changes. I've recently heard a statement "nobody will grant you that things get better when you make changes, but to make things better you have to make changes". Very true. And - that's in live and technology - I even believe that avoiding changes make things worse. Sometimes you even benefit from small changes. E.g. at our company we made things better by introducing a single Windows Server 2008 last year. And we had users and admins who had a big benefit. Re-evaluation is good, and changes ... changes are being alive.

But this here is about technology. So let me make a small update on what's going on with me in this field.

After the Directory Experts Conference in Chicago I was working back home, then went to the MVP-Summit in Seattle and it was great so see so many MVPs and folks from the Directory Services Product Group again. I really enjoyed it. Currently I'm preparing for two events: Microsoft TechEd USA for IT-Pros (yes - they followed the example from Europe and split the Developers and IT-Pros in two different weeks - however I enjoyed how it was before). At TechEd which will be in Orlando (again, been there last year, and a then two years before) I'll present 3 sessions and two interactive ones. So five slots in two days (I'm only scheduled in on Wednesday and Thursdays), this will be quite funny . I'm looking forward to it. I'm sad I had to decline the developer-week, but I can't take two weeks of vacation just speaking at two different TechEds. Would love to, but someone has to pay for my living. And I feel I really need vacation this year, I deserved it, believe me, but currently I'm unable to go on vacation.

Another thing I'm getting ready for is a whole day Workshop with the IT-Administrator, we'll cover Windows Server 2008 and nothing else. I'm looking forward to it, and I was told that there are many people signing up for it.

So exciting events to come soon, and I actually have a couple ideas (some already finished) about new technical blog entries, so stay tuned. I'll promise the next one will be technical and coming in a few days .

P.S.: Thanks for listening - I can't remember how many times I said this in the recent past and probably didn't say it often enough.

Impressions of the Directory Experts Conference

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:50:00 GMT

Today is day one of the Directory Experts Conference in Chicago. So far the conference has been very good - but that was as expected. I had one session today right before lunch, "A Directory Services Geek's View on Active Directory Recovery in Windows Server 2008". Went quite well, however the power-plug on stage was switched off so my machine decided to go into sleep-mode during the presentation. For some reason this session is attracting Laptop-issues, during the Launch in Frankfurt the virtual machine decided to "unexpectedly shutdown". Things happen, that's part of the fun, isn't it?

HEROS happen {here}

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:08:26 GMT

For the past three days I was at the Microsoft Launch Event Germany, the first and as we were told biggest (by the number of attendees) Launch for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. I did three presentations:

Active Directory-Domänendienste in Windows Server 2008
(Active Directory-Domainservices in WS2k8)
Erfahrungen eines Directory Services-Experten mit Sicherheit und Delegation im Active Directory
(A Directory Services-Geek's View on Access Control Entries)
Erfahrungen eines Directory Services-Experten mit Active Directory-Recovery mit Windows Server 2008
(A Directory Services Geek's View on Active Directory-Recovery in Windows Server 2008)

The event was very good and very successful as far as I can see. There were minor issues, e.g. on the first day it wasn't that clear which sessions are in which rooms, and the acoustic was pretty bad in some of the rooms since you were able to hear the other speakers of the other rooms as well (luckily two of my presentations were in the good rooms), but over all I was very satisfied. A lot of good and experienced speakers, interested and interesting attendees with good questions and suggestion, a great event. Overall there were about 7500 people in Frankfurt attending this event.

I've also got a view good ideas for some new blog-posts, so stay tuned.

And now it's time to get ready for the Directory Experts Conference 2008 in Chicago in the first week of March. I'll also present there the "Directory Services Geek's View on Active Directory-Recovery in Windows Server 2008" session.

Congrats Microsoft: Windows Server 2008 is RTM

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:12:21 GMT

I cannot state it any better: the best Windows Server release ever has been released to manufacturing - Windows Server 2008 is finished.

Windows Server 2008 is very stable and very well-done for production use. As I wrote before we at Computacenter are using it since October 2007 in Production, and I have a customer where we already run a full shop only on Vista and 2k8 since September (on Beta 3).

And we've also done a lot of things, to quickly recap just what we've done with customers was a 10-city Roadshow in Germany (half-day sessions on WS2k8, last one will be in Berlin next week), countless presentations at customer or trade shows / events, countless sessions to make sure our staff is ready to sell and deliver WS2k8-Solutions, one press-release in October, and a couple references which will be published shortly.We will be with many people at the German Launchevent, are partner there with a booth, and I'll deliver 3 sessions plus a interactive one, created many flyers and solutions around the product, … just being ready to deliver.

I'm very excited about the new product - let's start deploying more of it!

And here are the blogs which will give you a feeling how it was at Microsoft in the last couple hours:

Windows Server 2008 - RTM!!!

Windows Server 2008 – A time to sit back, remember and party!

I'm on the Edge [;)]

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:23:05 GMT

Last week I was at TechEd:IT-Forum in Barcelona. I'll follow up with more details later. However the guys from edge.technet.com have done an interview with me, which went online last night. I was speaking about my sessions, AD Restore in Windows Server 2008 and Schema Updates.

You can find it currently on the homepage, and here's the direct link for later:

Ulf on AD at TechNet Edge

Done: Windows Server 2008 in production

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:54:45 GMT

I'm working for Computacenter Germany. And - as you know - I'm a beta-junkie and try to stay up to date on newest releases as soon as possible. So this makes me really proud: at Computacenter we decided to deploy Windows Server 2008 already.

After testing the product very well we decided to update our schema to Windows Server 2008 and deploy our first servers in production. And ... one of the reasons why we did this to have the great new feature of Active Directory Snapshots available as soon as possible.

We released an press-article last week which I freely translated into english

Source (German), freely translated: http://www.computacenter.de/presse/pressemeldungen_2007/Computacenter_Pressemeldung_20071030.shtm

Computacenter relies early on Windows Server 2008

Head start for migrations and planning for Active Directory disasters

Kerpen, 30th October 2007. The European IT-Serviceprovider Computacenter relies early on Microsoft's Windows Server 2008. The new generation of the server operating system (OS) is announced to be released in the first quarter 2008. Computacenter, who is part of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP), already deployed Windows Server 2008 into its production network. The TAP is a initiative of Microsoft where selected customers implement products prior to their release into production infrastructures. Computacenter is participating in two different roles in the current TAP: as customer (who's deploying the product) as well as as consulting partner, where experienced Computacenter Consultants are supporting their internal Information Services. The IT-Serviceprovider is not only gaining experiences by early deploying the new technologies, but improves on stability and reliability of its infrastructure. Computacenter is using those experiences when consulting their customers, especially when talking about Windows Server 2008 migrations and planning for Active Directory disasters.
Migrations with Computacenter

With the ending support livecycle of Microsoft for Windows 2000 Server and the release of the new Windows Server 2008 with a lot of new possibilities many companies are considering migrations. Computacenter has many years of experiences when migration Microsoft-Infrastructures. More than 300 Experts in the Microsoft area rely on their experiences and broad knowlege, tools and procedures to drive migration-projects to a fast sucess while maintaining risks and costs at as low as possible.
Securing the hard of the Windows Infrastructure

Active Directory is the main component of a Windows Infrastructure by holding all informations about useraccounts, computeraccounts, passwords and groups of a company. Employees are using it daily to get access to their computers and their data, find printers and receive corporate settings. Experts of Computacenter were frequently helping companies to recover their Active Directory (usually due to human mistakes). To address this issue Computacenter developed preventive guidance to protect Active Directory. Windows Server 2008 provides additional control, prevention and auditing-functionality. The OS enables administrators to create Snapshots of the Active Directory-Database. As opposed to a backup it's easy to create snapshots multiple times a day. Futher the snapshots can be started as their own, read-only LDAP-Service. Hereby it's possible to gather information out of the Directory of different times. Additional the new product supports to prevent objects from accidential deletion or to accidentally move them. Computacenter is using those new functions and has added them to their portfolio around Active Directory-Recovery and its prevention. The IT-Serviceprovider is úsing those technologies in its production network since October 2007.
Those experiences are corporated into Computacenters three-part offer of a Active Directory Disaster Workshop, Guidance and Concept, which enables customers to preventively prepare informations for a possible recovery of Active Directory, to react on disasters and to keep the associated down-times at a minimum level. In the Active Directory Disaster Workshop the attendees get the know-how to prevent, troubleshoot and recover Active Directory. They are practicing which informations are necessary and which steps to take in certain disaster scenarios. The Active Directory Disaster Guidance bundles Computacenters experiences in this topic. It describes best practices and experiences out of real disasters as well as tested procedures. The IT-Serviceprovider additionally creates a AD Desaster Concept to prepare the individual company for an AD Recovery.

More speaking engagements

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:30:43 GMT

While we are in preperation for TechEd:IT-Forum which will be in Barcelona in November, there are more speaking engagements already scheduled:

October 24th and 25th:

The IT-Administrator asked me to speak about what's new in DNS and Active Directory in Windows Server 2008 at the German Tradeshow Systems. (Details)

November 12th to 16th:

I'll be delivering two sessions and an interactive session at TechEd:IT-Forum in Barcelona. My sessions will be "A Directory Services Geeks View on How to (not) extend your schema" and "Active Directory Recovery in Windows Server 2008", and I will host an interactive session (like the chalk-&-talks of the previous year, a session where attendees are encouraged to ask questions and get them answered) with Stephanie from the AD Product Group about "Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008".

February 19th to 21st:

Windows Server 2008 will be launched in Germany, and I'll speek at the launch event in Frankfurt. My sessions are "Active Directory Domain Services and DNS in Windows Server 2008" and "A Directory Services Geeks View on Access Control Entries".

March 2nd to 5th:

NetPro already announced the Directory Experts Conference 2008 in Chicago, and I was honored to be asked back as speaker.

Protect Objects from accidential deletion

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:23:05 GMT

Avalialbe in the GUI of Windows Server 2008, but also possible in any version of Active Directory, you are able to protect any object from accidental deletion. I had to recover a couple productive ADs over the past couple years, and everytime it was because of a accidental deletion. Also I've seen that OUs have been accidentally moved - this happened propably to everyone with files/folders in Windows Explorer - you accidentally got stuck on the mouse-key while hovering over a folder and drop it accidentally on another folder.

So how do you protect objects from accidental deletion in Windows Server 2008? That's easy - first switch on the Advanced View, then go into the properties of the object in question. Here - on the "Object"-Tab - you'll find the new checkbox "Protect Object from accidental deletion".

By default, OUs created in Active Directory-Users and -Computers are protected. However, when you don't create the OU in Active Directory-Users and -Computers or you created them before you got Windows Server 2008 in your domain (how likely - I know ) the OU will not being protected from accidental deletion.

However, what's quite interesting is what's being done in the Background: The Security-Descriptor of this object is being modified with a Deny-Entry for Everyone to delete and delete subtree. So it's downward compatible with Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000, and you are even able to do this either manually or using DSACLS today.

If you want to use DSACLS to protect an OU you can use the following command:

dsacls ou=MyUsers,dc=example,dc=com /d Everyone:SDDT

So if you are creating your OU-Structure with "dsadd ou" you might want to use this command to protect the OU from deletion. The checkbox in the GUI will also reflect this change, however I've seen that it sometimes takes a while or is inconsistently displaying wheter the OU is protected or not, however this might be a bug in the current beta and you should make sure it's protected using the security tab to make sure it's protected.

As I said, you'd be able to do this today as well. And if you want to protect your whole OU-Structure, you can use the following command to protect every OU in the domain:

for /f %i in ('dsquery ou -limit 0') do dsacls %i /d everyone:SDDT

Update: Marcus has pointed out that I the above command is only working if your OUs don't include any spaces. That's right, the for-command takes spaces as a delimiter and therefore will put everything behind the first space in the variable %j, after the second space in %k a.s.o. So here's the corrected command which allows spaces in your DN ("tokens=*" state that everything should be included in the first variable, you could also do a 1,3,* which would put the first part into %i, the third into %j and the rest in %k,.. Marcus suggested another way which would also work by not specifying any delimiters "delimns="):

for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('dsquery ou -limit 0') do dsacls %i /d everyone:SDDT

If you just want to protect certain levels, you only need to change the dsquery command.

Security-Boundary: Forest vs. Domain

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 16:47:08 GMT

About time for a somewhat technical post:

In some Newsgroup we recently discussed if it's considered Best-Practice to deploy a lot of single-domain forests as opposed to a single multi-domain forest. The major reason herefore was that in the early Windows 2000 days, somebody said that the domain is the security boundary. After they've figured out that you can elevate yourself as domain admins for a inner-forest trusted domain, they revised this statement and said that the only security boundary is the forest, not the domain.

Since this attack is not that likely, I prefer to state this differentelly:

The forest is the security boundary against malicious attacks (the attack is being done on purpose)
The domain is the security boundary against (domain) administrative mistakes

So for many things the domain might be enough of a security boundary. If you don't trust admins of a different domain enough that you think they might perform an attack (= elevate their rights in an area where they don't belong) on purpose, either fire them, fire them, don't give them administrative rights, fire them or put them into a separate forest.

Ressource-Forests (yeah - back to the NT days) are sometimes a good idea too, especially if separate companies want to share ressources, however keep in mind that they are a bit harder to manage and it depends on the application how well it integrates. You are also better of to use some solution like the Microsoft Identity Integration Server (or the Identity Integration Feature Pack) which is now part of Identity Lifecycle Manager to synchronize accounts into the ressource forest, however make sure to protect them well enough and to trust the admins of the resource forest from all parties. MIIS/IIFP allows you to sync the passwords of the users in question (by using a password filter on all DCs to notify MIIS, who's changing the passwords in the connected directories) to allow a better integration via single sign on / single credentials [1]. Don't forget to design processes for the changes in the ressource forest which are signed off by all participating companies.

OK - back to the subject - don't take any recommendations to deploy many single-domain forests only or to put everything in the same forest - think about it if it's really necessary and valuable to deploy multiple forests/domains. At one point there was a recommendation: If you are designing your active directory, and you think you need to add a different domain, rethink that decision. Not true in all scenarios, however think about your design.

One reason for multiple domains have been different password policies - and as I posted before this reason is vanishing in Windows Server 2008.

There are multiple opinions on this, so don't hold back on feedback / your thoughts.

P.S.: I do respect statements like the one "to recommend multiple single-domain forests" - they are a bit extreme however deliver the message. For example a friend of mine was at one of the top security sessions at TechEd US (where they showed a real-world-unlikely attack), and afterwards in the bathroom he heard attendees who just phoned back their companies to instruct them patching their Servers. So even after the attack was not to likely to happen in a real company, it delivered the message to keep your systems secure.

[1] Single Sign-On: The user is logging in once to his workstation, and getting access to other ressources automatically without re-authenticating
Single Credentials: I made this up a couple years ago - I think more valuable in the beginning are single credentials (combinations of username/password). Users in enterprises are sick of multiple accounts, because they have to remember different usernames and/or passwords, which is leading to weak passwords. If you are able to synchronize the password for the user more easily than providing him with single sign-on this is still valualbe, since the users don't have to remember multiple passwords. I wouldn't mind entering the same password to access multiple applications, however I do mind remembering different credentials.

DEC-Europe

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:54:14 GMT

DEC-Europe is approaching, and since I was communicating heavily the past days about this conference I decided to sum up my favorite reasons why this is the conference to be:

It's dedicated to Microsoft Directory Services
Attendees and Speakers are usually in the same hotel, encourages a lot of after-hour chats
This is the conference of a very high value for the Microsoft Identity and Access Management Product Group, therefore you have a lot of key-players from the PG being there, and they hear your feedback.
The content is very technical - I'm very sure that everyone who attends is getting new knowledge, ideas,...
I think I know a lot about Active Directory and DS in general, however every time I'm at DEC I'm boosting my knowledge.
It's all about community. Even since it's hosted by NetPro it's not about the company. They don't want product pitches outside of the clearly marked sponsor-sessions, they don't talk much about their own products, they welcome everyone - even competitive companies. It's all and only about the Directory Services Communities.
Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals and other industry notables are there and collaborate, answer questions, and just hang around.

I just booked my flights, and I'm very excited to be part of this great conference again. So I hope to see everyone in Brussels in a month.

P.S.: I'll be presenting the following sessions - and Gil, Guido Jorge and me will also do a daily session about Windows Server 2008 Scenarios.

A Directory Services Geek's View on Access Control Entries
You have already deployed Active Directory (AD), but still have a lot of domain administrators? You want to increase security, decrease the risk of administration gone awry and offload daily tasks to delegated admins? In this session you will learn how Access Control works in AD, notes from the field about implementing role based administration and how to figure out what to delegate. Additionally we will drill down on implementing delegation using scripts and share details on what to delegate. After this session you'll be able to design and implement role-based administration in your infrastructure.

A Directory Services Geek's View on How to (not) update your Schema
Are you:
- supposed to integrate some 3rd Party Schemaextensions in your Forest?
- asked to design your own schema extension?
- trying to figure out how to administer additional or new attributes?
Then you have to see this session. We will clear up the fog around schema extensions by explaining the difference between schema extensions and schema configuration, talk about designing/evaluating schema extensions (when is a extension “smooth” and when is it dangerous), and provide guidance on creating administrative interfaces for additional / new attributes. We are also announcing how Windows Server 2008 helps you when extending your schema. Come to this very technical session to get the most complete coverage about schema extensions you have ever seen.

Blush - to much honor

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:36:31 GMT

Nicki Wruck, the organizer of the "International Communities for Europe (ICE)"-Conference wrote in his blog about when we met a couple weeks ago at the SysAdmin Apprechiation Day (an event organized by Microsoft TechNet Germany):

Freely translated from http://blog.ice-lingen.de/VielZuSpaumltHellipOderDochNicht.aspx

"There was another highlight: Mr. Directory himself had the pleasure to meet me: Ulf B. Simon-Weidner was there and we found instantly interesting topics to chat about. The most important was: he'll be speaking at ice:2007, what I'm very proud of. Now I've got with Nils Kaczenski, Frank Röder and Ulf B. Simon-Weidner the greatest German-speaking AD-Specialists as speakers at the ice-conference."

Thanks for the fish Nicki - it was a pleasure to meet you and I'm looking forward speaking at your conference!

My Session at ICE: Active Directory Domain Services und DNS in Windows Server 2008

Upcoming Conferences (aka my speaking engagements)

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:41:49 GMT

Recently there was a lot of activity on the conference front.

I already wrote about the Directory Experts Conference 2007 in Europe.

Two weeks ago there was the "Sysadmin Apprechiation Day" - and Microsoft TechNet celebrated the admins with a party. I was invited to join. And I met the organizer of the community conference "Intelligent Communities for Europe (ICE)" - and was asked to present there. I'm looking forward to it - I have heard a lot about this conference but haven't been there yet.

Then Netpro announced the "Directory Experts Conference 2008" in Chicago. I'm proud to be asked back as speaker.

There might be more conferences, but since I haven't been officially confirmed yet I'll keep this for a later post. But if you followed my blog you will be able to find the page where some of my sessions are already listed .