Category: AD Forest
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Deploy WS2012R2 AD Domain Controller in Azure-OnPrem Hybrid Environment using Resource Manager (IaaS) Virtual Machine.
As part of the process of extending my on premise infrastructure environment to Microsoft Azure, I have configured the Azure S2S VPN, an Azure Virtual network and other Azure based components within an ARM resource group to facilitate the implementation of the hybrid infrastructure. In a recent post, I wrote about the steps to design…
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Raising Active Directory Forest and Domain Functional Levels Using PowerShell.
As part of the infrastructure clean up and upgrade plans, we have decided to raise the DFL and FFL of our domain to take advantage of new Windows Server features. The first step in the process is making sure all new DCs in the domain are running the same version of Windows Server. To meet…
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Simple PowerShell Script displays Total and Available Memory .
This script is an update to a previous post. In addition to displaying total and available disk space, it will also show the available memory at any given time for a server within a domain infrastructure. It has come in handy for me when I need to quickly spin up a standalone virtual machine on…
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Configuring Azure AD Sync Attribute Filtering.
So I’ve been playing with AADSync attribute filtering. So far we have successfully filtered our lab Azure AD sync by Domain and Organizational Unit. It appears that group membership based filtering is not supported with this version. But according to Microsoft, the Azure AD Connect tool (currently in Preview 2 version) which will eventually replace…
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Configuring Active Directory Time using the W32TM Utility.
Active Directory domain time in my lab domain has been off by a few minutes of UTC time for a while now. Resetting time across an Active Directory domain is a straight forward process using the W32tm command line tool. My first step was to determine the current AD domain time source on my client:…
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Using NTDSUTIL Metada Cleanup to Remove a Failed/Offline Domain Controller Object.
In this post, I would like to talk about using the ntdsutil utility for metadata cleanup. A domain controller failure ‘DC00’ recently occurred in my lab. Running the repadmin /replsum command confirmed a replication error and showed DC00 as unavailable: Since a dcpromo was obviously out of the question, I used the Ntdsutil metadata cleanup…
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Demoting the last Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain Controller with PowerShell.
As with promoting a server to domain controller, demoting the a domain controller is also a straight forward process with PowerShell. The following PowerShell cmdlets are available from the ADDSDeployment module: Uninstall Active Directory: The demote process got a little tricky because this was the last DC in the domain and had an Operations Master…
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Configuring a Single Windows Server 2012 R2 Active Directory Domain Controller in a new Forest.
Pre-Windows Server 2012 and PowerShell 4.0, the primary tool/command for Active Directory Domain Controller promotion and demotion has always been the Dcpromo command. With Windows Server 2012, it’s been replaced by a suite of PowerShell cmdlets contained in the ADDSDeployment module. In this post, I’ll talk about my experience setting up a single WS2012 R2…
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Deploying a Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain Controller in an existing Win2003 Functional Level Domain.
My first task before deploying a Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain Controller in a Windows Server 2003 forest functional level environment was to run the Test-ADDSDomainControllerInstallation cmdlet and determine my domain environment’s readiness to accept the new Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain Controller installation without any glitches: [ws2012r2]: PS C:\Users\admin\Documents> Test-ADDSDomainControllerInstallation -DomainName genesys.net | fl…
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Seizing Active Directory FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operations ) roles with Powershell.
I have been running 2 Virtual Machines as Active Directory Domain Controllers in the Lab for sometime now. DC00 was running Windows Server 2003 R2 and DC01 is running Windows Server 2008 R2. But recently I lost a Hyper-v machine hosting DC00 Domain Controller VM, I had no replica available to immediately failover and didn’t…