Here’s a quick tip on how to find out what ports your AD LDS instances are listening on. On the machine running the instance(s), open a command prompt with Administrator privileges and type the following: dsdbutil “li i” q The syntax used above runs the dsdbutil.exe utility with the “List Instances” option. The output… Read More: How to Find your AD LDS instances »
The other day I was in an environment where I had to find what Certification Authorities (CAs) were in place. With nobody immediately available to help me out, I stumbled around for bit before I worked out how to find them. Method 1. Query the membership of the Cert Publishers group. Cert Publishers is a… Read More: How to find your Certification Authorities and determine what type… »
I have recently spent some time working with Xpath queries as part of Event Log filtering in Windows Server 2008. It’s a great feature, but one limitation I found was that it doesn’t appear possible to use the starts-with() function when querying Event Logs with either the UI or Wevtutil.exe. Here’s an example. Let’s say… Read More: Powershell script to filter events using an Xpath query »
Laura Hunter and Brian Desmond will be doing a webcast discussing and demoing the new Active Directory features in Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as answering AD questions. They have a 90 minute slot and expect to spend ~45-60 minutes on R2 and the remainder taking questions on the presentation and AD in general. They’d love to see you… Read More: WS2008 R2 Active Directory Webcast »
In my last post, I provided a small batch file to support scheduled IFM dumps of an AD LDS instance. Afterwards, I realised that batch files are sooo last century and decided to have a crack at the Powershell version. I’m no Bwandon, but the script below seems to do the trick. # # Name: Create_IFM_Dump.ps1 #… Read More: Schedule backups of your AD LDS instance using Dsdbutil [2] »
Microsoft Technet describes how to back up an AD LDS instance using either Windows Server Backup or Dsdbutil.exe. Interestingly, the Dsdbutil method leverages the Install From Media (IFM) feature to perform the backup. Here’s a small batch file that you can use to schedule the backup using the Task Scheduler. @echo off rd /s c:\backup\adlds\Instance1\ /q %windir%\system32\dsdbutil.exe… Read More: Schedule backups of your AD LDS instance using Dsdbutil »
I really like the snapshot feature of Windows Server 2008 AD and have been using it quite a bit recently. This week I had my first foray into snapshotting with AD LDS. Everything is pretty much the same as for AD, the only obvious difference being that you can create the snapshots using either dsdbutil… Read More: Exposing AD LDS Snapshot with Dsamain? Don’t forget the switch! »
You may have heard via the grapevine, or even via the Beta program for that matter, that Windows Server 2008 R2 will ship with an Active Directory Module for Powershell. Having seen some of the capabilities at the recent MVP Summit, I am very impressed with the work the product team has done in… Read More: Active directory Powershell Blog »
Okay, okay, I realise that I may be labouring the point somewhat. I’ve already written two blog entries (here and here) about UAC in Windows Server 2008 and this is the third and (probably) last. When you check DC replication using the repadmin /showreps command from a privileged command window you might see something like… Read More: Windows Server 2008 User Account Control Gotcha #3 »
I’ve been working with both Vista and Windows Server 2008 for quite a while now, but I still manage to fall foul of User Account Control, especially when working from the command prompt. As you will no doubt be aware, there are certain tasks that need elevated privileges and these require you to open the… Read More: Windows Server 2008 User Account Control Gotcha #1 »