Active Directory Administration from Scratch 1

[twocan77]

Hi,

Our campus has recently moved to Windows Server 2003 and is using Active Directory. Our IT Department has been assigned an OU and will be responsible for administrating the branch for our 100+?? users. We are currently using Novell Netware 6.1. The campus also plans on implementing Xythos filesharing. We would like to move to AD first and still have access to our Novell files until we can move them all to Xythos. My colleague and I are familair with Netware, but will be learning AD from scratch.

We have started with the following books:

Inside Active Directory: A System Administrator's Guide by Sakari Kouti

Active Directory Bible (With CD-ROM) by Curt Simmons

Active Directory, Second Edition by Alistair G. Lowe-Norris

Active Directory for Dummies by Marcia Loughry


Does anyone have any suggestions or tips for this project? Or a sample of a project plan. We would obviously like to have a detailed plan in place before we begin.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Brett
vittu1977@yahoo.com

 

[markdmac]

twocan77,

Glad to see you are doing your homework. The books you have listed will certainly give you a jump start into understanding AD. As a Novell person, if you are used to NDS you should find the concepts fairly easy to understand.

One thing not clear to me is the current state of things. You say your group has been assigned an OU. Can I interpret this to mean that AD is already set up and you will only be administering the objects within your OU?

If so, your learning curve will be a lot less because you really only need to learn User and Computer administrative tasks and not all about ad. You might want to dive into Group Policy too since you have as many users as you do. You won't need to concern yourself with AD Sites & Services or DDNS etc. unless I misunderstand your situation.

I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[twocan77]

Hi Mark,

Thank you very much for the response. It was both helpful and reassuring. I have been looking at the AD demos on MicroSoft's site and was a little overwhelmed, but knowing that I will only have to concentrate user/computer admin tasks is comforting.

Yes, the campus AD is set up and we will be administrating our department.

Thanks again for the help.

Brett