The chances are that you spend your days working with just one aspect of Active Directory. There are another five areas that need your attention so that you can ensure that your Active Directory is working perfectly. Join us to learn about the other 5 areas of Active Directory management that you really should care about.
In this webinar, we will cover 6 areas of Active Directory management:
1. Auditing
2. Security
3. GPO's
4. Accounts
5. Recovery
6. Health
Join Concentrated Technology’s Greg Shields and ScriptLogic’s Nick Cavalancia as they compare free tips and tools for managing Active Directory to ScriptLogic’s Active Administrator solution.
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The “Other” 5 Things You Need to Care About in Active Directory
1. The “Other” 5 Things
You Should Care About in AD
Dial In: +1 (213) 289-0020
Access Code: 400-839-152
Or use your computer speakers
Greg Shields, MVP Nick Cavalancia
Partner and Principal Technologist VP, Windows Management
www.ConcentratedTech.com ScriptLogic
2. About the Speakers
Greg Shields
Greg is a Senior Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated
Technology. He is a Contributing Editor for TechNet Magazine and Redmond
Magazine, and a Series Editor for Realtime Publishers. Greg is a sought-after and top-
ranked speaker, seen regularly at conferences like TechMentor, Tech Ed, VMworld,
and more. He is a multiple recipient of Microsoft "Most Valuable Professional" award
with has received VMware's vExpert award.
Nick Cavalancia
Nick Cavalancia, MCSE/MCT/MCNE/MCNI, is ScriptLogic’s VP of Windows
Management where he assists in driving innovation and the evangelism of
ScriptLogic solutions. He has over 17 years of enterprise IT experience and is an
accomplished consultant, trainer, speaker, columnist and author. He has authored,
co-authored and contributed to over a dozen books on Windows, Active Directory,
Exchange and other Microsoft technologies.
3. About ScriptLogic
• Founded in 2000
• Focus on 4 key areas:
• Desktop Management
• Help Desk Management
• Active Directory Management
• Server Management
• Customer Base
• 30,800+ customers worldwide
• From SMB to Fortune 100
• Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida
• Subsidiary of Quest Software since 2007
4. Daily AD Management
• It’s not just creating users and resetting
passwords
• There are six areas of AD management
• Security • Accounts
• Auditing • Recovery
• Group Policies • Health
• Let’s look at what’s free and what
ScriptLogic offers
5. Active Administrator
• The single solution for AD management
• Secure
• Audit
• Manage
• Maintain
• Prevent
6. Focus 1: Security
• Implementing security isn’t enough
• Everyone’s creating groups, assigning rights, etc.
• The establishing of a security standard alone isn’t
enough.
• You need a process that follows the security
lifecycle to ensure AD is locked down properly
• Assess, Assign, Audit… repeat
7. Security– What’s Free?
• Plenty of power in PowerShell
• Free AD cmdlets from Quest Software
• Get-QADPermission
• Add-QADPermission
• Remove-QADPermission
• And more!
http://bit.ly/1EAVF0
8. What else is Free?
• Native Tools
• Nothing for Searching
• Delegation Wizard
9. Security - What’s Lacking?
• Requires potentially complex scripting
• Minimal management granularity
• No documenting what’s in place
11. Focus 2: Auditing
• It’s one thing to know who has rights
• It’s something entirely different to know
• What they’re doing with those rights
• What was changed
• What the change value is
12. Auditing – What’s Free?
• Native Windows Auditing
• Enable
• Configure
• Per-Server
• Find the Needle!
http://bit.ly/8n92Os
14. What Does ScriptLogic Offer?
• Centralized, Automated, Simplified
• Auditing
• Alerting
• Actions
DEMO!
15. Focus 3: Group Policies
• GPO management is a balanced mix of
security, settings and strategy
• There are over 3000 Group Policies with the
release of Windows 7
• “With great power comes great
responsibility”
• Complex mix of layered policies requires
some attention to ensure the proper
outcome for the user
16. GPOs – What’s Free?
• GPMC of course
• Delegation
• Management
• Basic Modeling
• Result Reporting
• Worth mentioning - AGPM with MDOP
http://bit.ly/r6n90x
17. GPOs – What’s Lacking?
• Ability to make changes without
impacting production
• Quickly fixing changes that impact
production
18. What Does ScriptLogic Offer?
• GPO History
• Offline Editing
• Advanced GPO Modeling
DEMO!
19. Focus 4: Accounts
• Let’s look beyond managing users & groups
• What about…
• Password Policies that impact users?
• Inactive Accounts?
• Expired Passwords?
21. Accounts – What’s Lacking?
• Inactive Accounts
• Reporting
• Automation
• Implementing Password Policies are not
easy, at best
• Expired Passwords
• Actions
22. What Does ScriptLogic Offer?
• Simplified Password Policies
• Inactive Account Management
• Proactive Password Reminders
DEMO!
23. Focus 5: Recovery
• It’s bound to happen
• You’re going to accidentally delete an object
that needs to be restored
• You need to revert to an older version of an
object
24. Recovery – What’s Free?
• DSRM
• AD Recycle Bin (2003R2)
• Simple Example: Single Object
Get-ADObject -filter {displayName -eq 'DonJ'} -IncludeDeletedObjects | Restore-ADObject
• More complex recoveries may involve
• Determining the original location of the object(s)
• Restoring the OU
• Restoring the objects
• Resetting Passwords
• Etc. http://bit.ly/kFoE0m
26. What Does ScriptLogic Offer?
• Recovery of
• Objects
• Attributes
• Security
• Group Policies
• Done Online, in real-time without DSRM!
DEMO!
27. Focus 6: Health
• Recognizing the “health” of AD is not
immediately obvious
• Are your DCs replicating?
• If not, what is the cause of the problem?
• How are you being notified of problems?
28. Health – What’s Free?
• Command-Line Tools
• Repadmin
• DCDiag
• PowerShell
• Possible but way too complex
30. What Does ScriptLogic Offer?
• Replication Analysis
• Error Detail
• Reporting
• Health
• Configuration
DEMO!
31. Summary
• 6 Areas of AD Management to Focus On
• Security • Accounts
• Auditing • Recovery
• Group Policies • Health
• Plenty of function in Free Tools
• Active Administrator centralizes,
automates and simplifies these tasks.
32. Resources
• Active Administrator
www.scriptlogic.com/aa
• 30-day Evaluation
• Walkthrough Tour
• Greg Shields
www.concentratedtech.com
33. “SMB IT Simplified”
www.scriptlogic.com/smbit
• Real-world articles
• Industry experts
• Vendor-agnostic
Connect with us
Assess, Assign, Audit is a security lifecycle:You first assess the current state of securityMake changes based on the assessmentAudit the usage of AD to ensure the changes are correctIf you see something out of whack – what would you do? Reassess, reassign, reaudit.
