CNUG-IT (Chennai .NET User Group – Infrastructure Division) hosted the monthly user group meet on 19th February 2005 in the Microsoft Regional Office – Chennai.
The Session was on Advanced Active Directory and it was presented by Mr. Karthik Raghavan. We had presented a session on the basics of Active directory 2 months back and I had discussed with the other members whether they had seen the interface of Active Directory as well as the features of AD. Since only a few of them had seen the interface of AD we felt that we had to show a demo on how Active Directory was installed and configured.
The following topics were planned for the meeting.
1. Functionality of Active Directory.
2. Enhancements in Win 2003 Server.
3. Simplifiying Active directory administration using scripts.
4. Active Directory Diagnostics using windows support tools.
5. Backup and Recovery of Active directory.
We had planned to configure an instance of Windows 2003 Server on Virtual PC and then start with the demos. Unfortunately due to some unavoidable circumstances, we were able to get the lap top from Mr. Ravickumar only on Saturday morning after the attendees had assembled in the venue.
So I decided to utilize this opportunity to demonstrate the new features of virtual PC 2004 and gave a full demo from scratch. We explained the functionality of Virtual PC and how it functions. Then we proceeded to install Windows 2003 Standard Server on Virtual PC. As the installation was in progress I explained the advantages of Virtual Pc as well as the limitations of Virtual PC. This was quite interesting to the attendees.
Also as the installation was in progress, Mr. Karthik spoke of the features of Active Directory and finally when the installation of Windows 2003 Server was completed, Mr. Karthik was able to demonstrate the following features.
A. configured DNS server
B. configured ADS
C. Enhancements in Win2003 ADS
D. Simplifiying Active directory administration using scripts.
E. Active Directory Diagnostics using windows support tools
F. Backup and Recovery of Active directory
As part of the User group’s activities a book on Windows Scripting was presented to Mr. Buddha G for his valuable contributions by the President of the User group. We are sure that this incentive will encourage all the members to contribute activitely to the group.
Definitely it was one of the most interesting session we had this year.
M. Rajesh's Web Space 