Disgruntled Microsoft Active Directory users have voiced concerns
about the management support costs of the network operating
system.
The users' reaction follows Microsoft's recent admission that
Active Directory, the network operating system bundled with Windows
2000, is cumbersome to use, particularly for very large, multi-site
organisations.
Stuart Kwan, Microsoft group programme manager for Active
Directory, admitted at a US conference last month that "users have
said Active Directory could be a lot easier to deploy", and "on a
big network it takes 24 hours to replicate the domain
controller".
The network administrator of a local education authority cited
several flaws in Active Directory that emerged after a Windows 2000
implementation. She said, "There is no built-in import of users
that will create home directories and rights.
"We have some schools with thousands of students. At the beginning
of each year we do an import of data and we had to buy a
third-party product that would import home directories. We were
previously a Novell user and could do this," the administrator
said.
Ben Channell, of IT support services at the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office, said, "The amount of data to be transferred
with Active Directory is over 250Mbytes. A post [network database
change] may delete a user but it may not make it to the central
server.
"With Active Directory, a post may not receive a full copy.
Fragmentation may happen; there is no re-indexing; and updates may
not synchronise, causing trust to fail and problems with log-in
e-mail names," Channell added.
Phil Roberts, of Owen & Palmer, an IT services firm based in
Bangor, north Wales, said his company planned to charge more for
providing management services to users running Windows 2000.
Roberts explained that this was because of the amount of time it
takes for a third party to solve problems when things go wrong with
Active Directory.
Have you had any problems with Windows 2000 server?
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