Mixed bag ‘o Nuts

It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged, so here’s a more or less random collection of snippets for you to enjoy/delete at leisure.

Quest acquires Netpro

Wow, this one took me by surprise, especially as I have been contracting to Quest on and off for the past 10 months.  Two of the biggest names in the Active Directory management space are now one.  It’s going to take quite a while for competitors to breach the gap.

Microsoft acquires Deano

I just learned from Joe Richard’s blog that Dean Wells has taken a position at Microsoft within the Directory Services product team in Redmond.  I’ve known Dean for the past six years or so and he is one of the most knowledgeable AD people around.  He’s forgotten more about AD than most of us know.  I’m sure he’ll be a huge asset to the DS team.  Good luck Deano!

Handy CSV import script

I came across a good vbscript for modifying AD attribute values using a CSV input file.  There are a number of methods and scripts around that can work with CSV input files, but the cool thing about this script is that can easily be modified to accommodate different attributes.  Check it out here.  I’m thinking of putting together a Powershell version of the same thing.

Good anecdote from Don Hacherl

A while back I blogged about one of the new features of AD in Windows Server 2008: protection from accidental deletion.  If you were looking for a good supporting anecdote to hasten the deployment of this feature in your environment, look no further than this nugget from one of the Godfathers of AD, Don Hacherl, posted on the mailing list at ActiveDir.org:

From: ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org [mailto:ActiveDir-owner@mail.activedir.org] On Behalf Of Don Hacherl
Sent: Sunday, 7 September 2008 4:52 p.m.
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Delegating Start/Stop Service on DCs

Years ago I worked with a “domain admin qualified” person at Microsoft who fat fingered the admin UI and deleted a container instead of the object he was intending.  The container was named “North America”, and that was the night we wrote our first authoritative restore tool.  (Later he said “I wondered why it was taking so long to finish.”)

A tightly constrained proxy program can be more reliable and less dangerous than a distracted human administrator.

Don

Tech-Ed

My sessions at Auckland and Sydney completed without mishap and my demos (bizarrely) worked without one single blue-screen 🙂  The feedback was positive and I was happy with the eval scores.  Looking at the video of my session, I realise that I need to slow down a little, engage the audience more and stop saying “um” so much.  Talking in front of a large audience is nerve-wracking and I wasn’t even aware I was doing it.

Tech-Ed in Sydney was also a good opportunity to catch up with fellow DS MVP Gil Kirkpatrick and my ex-colleagues from Gen-i, Craig Pringle and James Brombergs.