RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory Lab Recommendations

[Dean Wells]

... forgot to mention that any number of rollbacks within the available timeframe takes (in our configuration) only minutes (the most costly demand on the time to return-to-ready state is the OS's bootstrap).   -- Dean Wells MSEtechnology * Email: dwells@msetechnology.com http://msetechnology.com   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dean Wells Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 8:59 PM To: Send - AD mailing list Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory Lab Recommendations I've seen a slew of production and lab scenario requests over the past year or so, many of which I've offered non-technology specific recommendations for ... more recently I've focused my efforts on a non-Microsoft solution that I developed for MSEtechnology, used for some time in the Remote Learning arena, named ECbox (originally defined as "Electronic Classroom in a Box" though more recently internally-colloquially known as "Enterprise Computing in a Box").   The solution was designed from its inception to provide a means of snapshotting a distributed environment whose services impose a potential requirement to roll-back the entire distributed implementation to an earlier point in time (lock, stock and, hopefully not too-smoking, barrel).  As I mentioned, the ECbox is used extensively for remote learning but MSEtechnology has also deployed it as a platform around which our own internal technology services are housed.    Simply put, the ECbox is a solution built upon VMware ESX Server containing server (and administrative client-side mods.) designed specifically to tailor ESX's feature set to the demands of collective groups of dependent computers (e.g. a distributed database such as Active Directory).  For the sake of example, MSEtechnology is able to roll its entire Directory, Web and Messaging service (though our requirements are comparatively small, the scale is something of an irrelevant factor in rollback capability and time) back to a multitude of daily earlier points in time (MSEtechnology's current capacity/requirement allows for a couple of weeks).   Hope this proves useful.   Regards.   Dean   -- Dean Wells MSEtechnology * Email: dwells@msetechnology.com http://msetechnology.com   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bernard, Aric Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 8:04 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Active Directory Lab Recommendations How about MSVS 2005, MSVPC 2004, or VMWare (pick your flavor) with undo disks? From my experience this a lot faster and typically cheaper than using a disk imaging utility and a slew of physical machines.   Regards,   Aric   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 4:54 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: [ActiveDir] Active Directory Lab Recommendations   Wondering what  others use for a Active Directory Lab environment. Would like to build a AD lab for our QA people that can easily be rolled back prior to testing changes. Currently considering options such as Ghost, and/or full restores. Anybody got any good ideas ? Thank You ! And have a nice day ! ************************************************************** Mark Lunsford KAISER PERMANENTE Directory Services Identify Management (DSIM/NOS) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Outside Phone: 925-926-5898 Tie Line Phone: 8-473-5898 C ell: 925-200-0047 Remedy Group: NOPS SCRTY DSIM NOS **************************************************************