Recipe 1.5 Where to Find More Information
While it is my hope that this book provides you with enough
information to perform most of the tasks you need to do to maintain
your Active Directory environment, it is not realistic to think every
possible task has been covered. In fact, there is easily another
three to four chapters I could have included in this book, but due to
space and time considerations, it was not possible for this edition.
Working on this book has made me realize just how must stuff Active
Directory administrators need to know.
Now that Active Directory has been around for a few years, a
significant user base has been built, which has led to other great
resources of information. This section contains some of the useful
sources of information that I use on a regular basis.
1.5.1 Command-Line Tools
If you have any questions about the complete syntax or usage
information for any of the command-line tools I use, you should first
take a look at the help information for the tools. The vast majority
of CLI tools provide syntax information by simply passing
/? as a parameter. For example:
> dsquery /?
1.5.2 Microsoft Knowledge Base
The Microsoft Support web site is a great source of information and
is home of the Microsoft Knowledge Base (MS KB) articles.
Throughout the book, I include references to pertinent MS KB articles
where you can find more information on the topic. You can find the
complete text for a KB article by searching on the KB number at the
following web site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx.
You can also append the KB article number to the end of this URL to
go directly to the article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=.
1.5.3 Microsoft Developers Network
MSDN contains a ton of information on
Active Directory and the programmatic interfaces to Active Directory,
such as ADSI and LDAP. I sometimes reference MSDN pages in recipes.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to reference the exact page
I'm talking about unless I provided the URL or
navigation to the page, which would more than likely change by the
time the book was printed. Instead I provide the name of the title of
the page, which you can use to search on via the following site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/.
1.5.4 Web Sites
- Microsoft Active Directory Home Page (http://www.microsoft.com/ad/)
-
This site is the
starting point for Active Directory
information provided by Microsoft. It contains links to white papers,
case studies, and tools.
- Microsoft Webcasts (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;pwebcst)
-
Webcasts are on-demand audio/video technical presentations that cover
a wide range of Microsoft products. There are several Active
Directory-related webcasts that cover such topics as disaster
recovery, upgrading to Windows Server 2003 Active Directory, and
Active Directory tools.
- Google Search Engine (http://www.google.com/)
-
Google is my primary starting point for locating information on
Active Directory. It is a powerful search engine and is often quicker
and easier to use to search the Microsoft web sites than using the
search engines provided on Microsoft's sites.
- LabMice Active Directory (http://www.labmice.net/ActiveDirectory/default.htm)
-
The LabMice web site contains a large collection of links to
information on Active Directory. It has links to MS KB articles,
white papers, and other web sites.
- Robbie Allen's Home Page (http://www.rallenhome.com/)
-
This is my personal web site, which has information about the Active
Directory books I've written and links to download the
code contained in each (including this book).
1.5.5 Newsgroups
- microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory
-
This is a very active
newsgroup
where several top-notch Active Directory experts answer questions
posed by users.
- microsoft.public.win2000.dns
-
This is another good resource if you have a DNS question
you've been unable to find an answer for; odds are
someone on this newsgroup will have an answer.
- microsoft.public.adsi.general
-
If you have questions about ADSI, this is another very active
newsgroup where you can find answers.
If you have a question about a particular topic, a good starting
point is to search the newsgroups using Google's
Groups search engine (http://groups.google.com/). Just like its web
search engine, the group search engine is very fast and is an
invaluable resource when trying to locate information.
1.5.6 Mailing Lists
- ActiveDir (http://www.activedir.org/)
-
The ActiveDir mailing list is where the most advanced Active
Directory questions can get answered. The list owner, Tony Murray,
does an excellent job of not allowing topics to get out of hand as
can sometimes happen on large mailing lists. The list is very active
and it is rare for a question to go unanswered. Some of
Microsoft's Active Directory Program Managers also
participate on the list and are very helpful with the toughest
questions. Keeping track of this list is a must-have for any serious
Active Directory administrator.
- 15 Seconds (http://15seconds.com/focus/ADSI.htm)
-
Just as the ActiveDir list is crucial for AD administrators, the 15
seconds list is extremely valuable for AD developers. It is also very
active and the participants are good about responding to questions
quickly.
1.5.7 Books
In addition to the Resource
Kit
books, the following books are good sources of information:
- Active Directory, Second Edition, by Robbie Allen and Alistair Lowe-Norris (O'Reilly)
-
This is a good all-purpose book on Active Directory. A few of the
topics the second edition cover include new Windows Server 2003
features, designing Active Directory, upgrading from Windows 2000,
and Active Directory automation.
- Managing Enterprise Active Directory Services, by Robbie Allen and Richard Puckett (Addison-Wesley)
-
This is a great resource for anyone who has to support a large-scale
Active Directory environment. The book preaches the benefits of
automation in large environments and includes over 300 sample scripts
written in Perl and VBScript.
- Active Directory Programming, by Gil Kirkpatrick (MacMillan)
-
This is a great book for those interested in learning the details of
ADSI and LDAP programming. The author, Gil Kirkpatrick, is a noted
expert in the field.
1.5.8 Magazines
- Windows & .NET Magazine (http://www.winnetmag.com/)
-
This is a general-purpose monthly
magazine
for system administrators that support Microsoft products. The
magazine isn't devoted to Active Directory, but
generally there are related topics covered every month.
- Windows Scripting Solutions (http://www.winscriptingsolutions.com/)
-
This is a useful monthly newsletter that discusses automation scripts
on a wide variety of Microsoft products including Active Directory.
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