Migrations from NT4 and In Place Upgrades

Microsoft Active Directory has been around since 2000, but there are a number of organisations that have yet to upgrade and realise the business benefits and new features offered.

In Windows NT 4.0 many applications and services require a separate, distinct directory and user id/password to be managed for each application or service. With Active Directory, the administrator of the organisation can add a user to Active Directory and through that single entry enable remote access to the network, enable the same user account for Exchange messaging, that same user for database access for accounting, client relationship management, or other applications. By doing so a company enables single sign-on for its users. Once a user logs in to Windows their Active Directory credential is the key that will automatically unlock all of the applications or services that they have been enabled for.

By creating a link between user accounts, mailbox accounts, and applications, Active Directory simplifies the task of adding, modifying, and deleting user accounts. When an employee gets married and changes their name, a single change in Active Directory can change the user information for all applications and services. When a user changes their password in Active Directory, they do not have to remember different passwords for their other applications.

Many organisations believe that when upgrading from a Windows NT 4.0 domain to Windows 2003 Active Directory, a clean design and installation of Active Directory is necessary. In most instances this is not necessary and by performing an "In Place" upgrade we can help you migrate to Active Directory with low cost and very little impact to the business. Once Active Directory has been deployed your Active Directory can be gradually re-designed to suit your business requirements.

Other Services:

Active Directory Forest Design

Forest Structure, placement of Domain Controllers, Global Catalogs and DNS servers.

Organisational Unit Design.

Active Directory allows you to organise users and other objects into containers and delegate permissions to those containers. We can help you design an Organisational Unit structure that fits your IT management model.

Group Policy Design and Implementation

Group Policies give you central control of your Desktops and Servers, from Logon Scripts, Security Settings and Desktop appearance, to delivering applications. We can help you build and implement these policies.

DNS Infrastructure

We can help you design and implement an efficient, secure and robust DNS infrastructure.

Are you having problems with Active Directory? Try our Health Check

We regularly speak to organisations that are experiencing problems with Active Directory. AD replication, sizing issues, group policy object processing and morphed folders are all common examples. If you are having similar problems you should consider our health check service.

Products to Help you Manage Active Directory

We can advise on software products to help you make the most of Active Directory, for example, ScriptLogic Active Administrator and Desktop Authority.

For more information please call us on +44 (0)8707 520570 or fill in our contact form