Designing and Troubleshooting Windows 2000 Active Directory

The Active Directory is the biggest single change to Windows 2000 from Windows NT. The Windows 2000 Active Directory can support a huge scope of features and capabilities in an enterprise environment. Microsoft designed Windows 2000 and Active Directory with the enterprise network in mind. Their goal in developing the new operating system and directory service was to have scalability that would extend to large and complex network configurations. Directory services are becoming the cornerstone of enterprise networking today, and understanding how to design, build, use, maintain and troubleshoot the Windows 2000 directory services infrastructure is essential to performing the duties of a system administrator.According to ZDNET, "Corporate IT organizations will spend as much money over the next five years integrating Windows 2000 into the enterprise as they spent in the last three remediating Y2K, and if you don't implement Active Directory right the first time, you'll have to start again fromscratch". IT Professionals realize the incredible benefits made possible by Active Directory, but are also well aware of the inherent complications and expense that will result from poorly designed and configured Directory Services. The importance of this topic to IT Professionals is evidenced by Microsoft's creation of a Designing Directory Services exam as a cornerstone of the upcoming MCSE 2000 certification.Taking full advantage of Windows 2000 features requires the development of an Active Directory infrastructure that reflects an organization's unique requirements. Designing and Troubleshooting Windows 2000 Active Directory will provide system administrators with a thorough review of therequirements of their network infrastructure, and extensive coverage of directory designSyngress Media, Inc. Staff is the author of 'Designing and Troubleshooting Windows 2000 Active Directory' with ISBN 9781928994244 and ISBN 1928994245.