Active Directory Cookbook, 4th Edition

Chapter 18. Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service

Introduction

Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) was released in November 2003 on the Microsoft website. With the release of Windows Server 2008, along with several other technologies, Microsoft renamed ADAM. The new name for ADAM is Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS). AD LDS is a lightweight LDAP platform that allows developers and administrators to work with AD objects such as users, groups, and organizational units, without worrying about the overhead of running a full-blown copy of the Active Directory Domain Services. AD LDS can run on Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 computers, and you can run multiple instances of AD LDS on a single machine. Because AD LDS runs as a standalone service, you can start, stop, install, or remove AD LDS instances without affecting or interfering with any underlying AD infrastructure. AD LDS can leverage domain authentication, local machine users, and groups, or it can authenticate users based on security principals that you’ve created within AD LDS itself. (It’s important to note that these are separate from Active Directory security principals, which cannot be created within an AD LDS instance.)

AD LDS includes the following features:

Server Core support

AD LDS can be installed on computers that are running Server Core, the reduced-footprint installation option that was introduced with Windows Server 2008.

Auditing for AD LDS changes

The Directory Services Changes ...