Active Directory Cookbook

Foreword

I’ve been waiting for “The Year of the Directory” for 15 years, basically since “The Year of the LAN,” which, if I recall correctly, occurred in 1983, 1984, 1985, and briefly again in 1988. But as I write this in 2003, there are very few enterprise networks that are not running a directory of one sort or another. While I was patiently waiting at the front door, the directory slipped in the back. I must have been napping on the couch.

The Year of the Directory never came, nor will it ever. Just as with TV, fax, LANs, cell phones, and the Internet, we’ve experienced another sea change in communications and information technology. But no one can point to the time when the change “happened.” Ocean tides have a well-defined schedule, but watershed technology changes are more like global warming. “Look, Honey! The waves come right up to the front porch!” The IT industry has simply evolved over time to assimilate yet another new technology, making our ability to communicate and compute more seamless, more pervasive, and more affordable.

And that’s sort of the point of directories: to make it possible for us to build larger, more sophisticated networks that don’t collapse under the weight of their own complexity. The first commercial NOS with an integrated directory, Banyan’s VINES, was a startling success in this regard. At a time when most enterprise IT executives were just dimly aware that workgroup LANs had utterly subverted their minicomputer and mainframe-based strategies, ...