Years ago, when I was cutting my teeth on Solaris 2.5, I never once thought that I would one day be considered somewhat of an “expert” for a Microsoft product. Unix, Solaris and Linux were my preferred OS since I felt that they were far more efficient and powerful compared to that of the Windows OS. Well, lo and behold, here I am today, writing about AD LDS. The irony is palpable.
How did I get to this point? While working for Check Point, I did a lot of partner integrations that leveraged Active Directory as the user repository. I quickly became enamored with its mix of complexity and usability. Additionally, I saw the tip to a technical iceberg that I knew would continually feed my insatiable thirst for knowledge.
How can I call myself an “expert” in such a voluminous topic? At my current place of employment, I am the “go-to” person for all problems related to Active Directory, ADAM and AD LDS. I have specialized in the area of ADAM and AD LS since the multi-factor authentication platform with which I work leverages Active Directory via schema update. As you can imagine, that inspires fear and loathing within just about every AD admin with whom I work. ADAM and AD LDS have become the recommended implementation route for evaluations since they do not modify the core AD schema. No custom schema for the AD schema master == happy AD admins.
So, how does all of this make me an “expert”? It does not make me an expert along the lines of Lee Flight or Joe Kaplan, but it does mean that I have more knowledge about AD, ADAM and AD LDS than the rest of the people in my company. Do I consider myself an expert? No, I do not consider myself an expert. To me, an expert is someone who knows ever last little minute detail about a specific topic. I am far from that level of understanding with regard to AD, ADAM and AD LDS. However, I do know enough to know that I want to know more and that is what brings us here today.
This AD LDS primer is my way of transferring the knowledge I have as well as (hopefully) learning more about it in the process. This will be a series of posts to illustrate what AD LDS is and how to work with it in your environment. Will it answer all of your questions and get you a raise at work? Likely not, but my hope is that it will be a good reference point for getting AD LDS set up in your environment.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know. It is important to have dialog about this type of technology so everyone can learn and be inspired.
