News
Microsoft Posts Stand-Alone Active Directory
- By Scott Bekker
- 08/07/2003
Microsoft has posted the bits for its stand-alone Active Directory, an out-of-band component of Windows Server 2003 that greatly expands the flexibility of Microsoft's directory services.
Active Directory in Application Mode, or AD/AM, unties Active Directory from the server operating system and the domain structure -- addressing one of the big criticisms of Active Directory in the Windows 2000 release.
Key differences between AD/AM and the regular Active Directory are that AD/AM runs as an independent service instead of an operating system service, it is not required to run on a domain controller, it can be run in multiple instances on a single server and it will run on Windows XP for development and testing purposes.
Microsoft has identified several usage scenarios for AD/AM:
To deploy an application-specific directory.
For use by application developers.
For extranet access management.
For migrations.
The bits are available here..
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.