Active Directory support systems come to the fore

If there is any doubt that Microsoft's forthcoming Active Directory will be a huge technology challenge for enterprises, look no further than the rash of support packages springing to life to aid in the directory's rollout.

Over the past few months, vendors have been talking about migration, modeling and management environments, all intended to help enterprises move from NT's flat domain structure to Active Directory's hierarchical construction.

Network executives, busy devising strategies for this critical upgrade, are happy to hear the banter. And that talk got louder last week when Entevo unveiled two new tools for its DirectManage directory management suite.

Microsoft got into the Active Directory support act itself last month by licensing technology from Mission Critical Software for inclusion in Windows 2000, which will also include Active Directory. The Mission Critical software will let users run NT domains and Active Directory in parallel and roll back changes if things start to go haywire. The Microsoft move addressed concerns about a harrowing migration path the company had suggested - a live, production upgrade to Active Directory.

And previous to that announcement, Fast Lane Technologies chimed in with two deployment kits for making forklift and incremental upgrades. The kits include FastLane DM/Manager for migrating users and groups to Active Directory, and FastLane DM/ Administrator for modeling Active Directory domain trees and structures.

"In terms of Microsoft pushing Windows 2000 as its full package for corporate networks, Active Directory is a big part of the story," says Rick Villars, an analyst with International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.

And it's a complex part at that.

"There is no doubt that moving to Active Directory is a major undertaking," says George White, director of the Bureau of Desktop Technology for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. White is using tools from Entevo to help him with a project designed to convert 40,000 desktops to a common e-mail system and directory structure.

"I would not want to attack this problem without these tools," White says.

He may get even more help from Entevo's new tools.

DirectMigrate 2000 is a wizard-based product that automates the migration of data to Active Directory. It supports 36 migration scenarios and features a test environment and rollback options. A feature called DirectMap allows NT domain data to be mapped to a pilot environment for trial and error testing.

Entevo also added Exchange Plus Pack to DirectManage. With the pack, users can manage any object in the Exchange directory, including public folders. It also has a tool called ActionReports that allows management tasks, such as deleting users or changing folder ownership, to be executed from within report query results.

Entevo also has upgraded the DirectAdmin component of its DirectManage suite so that users can manage Active Directory, NT domains, Exchange and Novell Directory Services directories from a single console. Version 3.0 of DirectAdmin also has new filtering capabilities for assigning different levels of access to each network administrator. In addition, DirectAdmin 3.0 has a new scripting engine for automating tasks and a Web interface. It also supports Windows Terminal Server and Remote Access Service.

"With Windows 2000, there is a lot of new technology for IT to get its hands on," says Silas Matteson, director of product management. "We'll provide tools in phases. This first phase helps in the migration to Active Directory. The next phase we will add tools for things such as trust management across Windows 2000 and NT 4.X domains."

DirectMigrate 2000, a free download, and DirectAdmin 3.0 will be available in August. DirectAdmin costs $19 per managed account. The Exchange Plus Pack is available now and costs $5 per managed account.