3rd party AD tools

[Diane McCorkle]

There's been a bit of talk on 3rd party AD tools,

Some folks prefer command line, some GUI, I'm a GUI person.

I'm looking for some recomendations that go past the native tools to help
myself and the help desk staff manage things from OU's, importing to a whole
OU from XLS sheets, possibly GPO's.

We're under the gun to perform miracles in minutes, and while it's not
possible, we try anyway.. and tools to help us save time would be best.

Helper apps for deploying software in GPO, etc.

And additionally domainwide tools to help troubleshoot AD replication and
FRS issues over time.

I know it's a wide list, but we're so overwhelmed and there are so many
options out there, I'd like some feedback from folks that have real world
experience with these tools.

FYI the target domain is currently 30 OU's one for each branch, with about
400 total users/computers with it doubling within the next 18 months as I
migrate remote sites in.

I'd prefer responses here in the NG so others can share

TIA

Diane

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Diane McCorkle
Systems Administrator
ATC Associates MIS Department
781.404-1364
diane.mccorkle at atcassociates.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Jimmy Andersson [MVP]]

Good tools,
FRSDiag
Sonar
Technet ScriptCenter (just copy/paste the scripts)
ADSI Scriptomatic

Regards,
/Jimmy

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Good morning, Diane!

In addition to the wonderful tools that Jimmy suggested, take a look at the
following:

ADModify
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/PSS/Tools/Exchange%20Support%20Tools/ADModify/

oldcmp
http://www.joeware.net

ADJanitor
http://www.specopssoft.com/products/ADJanitor/Default.asp

Support Tools ( I am sure that you have them, but these are really a nice
bunch )

The new ds tools ( dsquery, dsmod, et al )

Also, if you use Exchange 2000 look at ExMerge.

There is also ldifde and csvde. I like ldifde a lot but if you are using
..xls then csvde might be an appropriate utility.

HTH,

Cary