Category: 1460

Microsoft released the Windows 8.1 Preview today, as part of the announcements made during //Build/ 2013 and TechEd Europe 2013. While in the past with Preview releases of Windows, you would be stuck waiting for deployment, management and customization tools, this release is a complete package from day 1

Undoubtedly, you have seen the announcements made by Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of Program Management in Microsoft’s Windows Server and System Center Group (WSSC), during the TechEd North America 2012 Keynote. During this keynote, among other things, he announced the General Availability of the Preview for Windows Server 2012 R2.

Today, Microsoft made Azure Active Directory generally available (GA). This means it is ready for production use. Azure Active Directory enables organizations to provision their users with a single identity that can be used to access applications that are run on Windows Azure, run by 3rd party cloud-based vendors and/or within their own datacenters.

In the earlier 20 blogposts on new features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, I’ve covered most of the main stream new features. Today, I’m covering a lesser known feature: SID Compression. While this feature has been around in earlier versions of Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server, it has been … Continue reading "New features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, Part 21: Resource SID Compression"

Last month, around the time Microsoft released Windows Server 2012, I published twenty blogposts on the new features in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in Windows Server 2012. Many people were positive on the extent of the information in these blogposts and many websites linked to the blogposts. Some people urged me to publish … Continue reading "Whitepaper: What’s New in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012"

This page contains the following whitepaper: What's new in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012 How your organization can benefit from the new features in Active Directory Domain Services and Windows Server 2012   Title : What’s New in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012 How your organization can benefit from the … Continue reading "Whitepaper on What's new in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012"

Previously in this series we covered the challenges surrounding RID Depletion in Active Directory. This time around, let’s talk about DNTs.

With all the fancy features in Active Directory, I almost tend to forget it was originally an x.500 directory services, offering LDAP connectivity. Although today this is less evident, LDAP is intensively used under the hood for directory connectivity. Alongside the older RPC-based protocols it is used for over 90% of the communication to the … Continue reading "New features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, Part 17: LDAP Enhancements"

Windows Genuine Advantage and Windows Activation has been hunting admins trying to make their legally purchased volume licenses seamlessly work for them for years.

Active Directory is a proven technology that has been around since Windows 2000 Server. Some Active Directory environments have been around since that time, while some others have even been around ever longer and started their lives as Windows NT 3.x or Windows NT 4.0 domains. With directory environments growing older, some limits of these … Continue reading "New features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, Part 14: RID improvements"