I just posted that in R2 Microsoft plans to provide a true Recycle Bin for AD objects that were deleted, but until then the best we’ve got is Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.
After hours of researching “how do AD snapshots in 2008 help me recover a deleted object(s), it’s attributes, and referring objects (i.e. groups pointing back to the deleted user)?” I was disappointed.
From what I can tell, the answer is: built in tools allow for no additional automation over 2003 AD, other than using cut and paste to restore attributes from the snapshot to live AD (after you’ve reanimated the object in live AD).
You may be able to mount AD snapshots, and even view them with Users and Computers and other AD tools, but you really can’t DO ANYTHING with that data So I went searching for how others were solving this.
Here’s one of a few tools that tries to automate the process of finding the tombstoned object in your live AD, find it’s old info in a snapshot, and dumping that data back in to the reanimated object in AD:
Jorge from dirteam.com talks about it, basically describing my realization in greater detail
We’re starting our plan for upgrading our Domain Controllers to Win2008. A few cool features are snapshots of AD (may replace our lag sites if we can figure out how to use snapshots for item recovery) and local admins of the DC’s don’t have to be domain admins. Our GPO replication also leaves legacy FRS technology for DFSR. Lots of other little things are improved, but that’s the big stuff.
Honestly 2008 wasn’t that exciting for us AD fans. No recycle bin, no PowerShell support, same old MMC w/o quick search, no native “web services” for AD… But it looks like they plan to take care of ALL that and more in Win2008 R2 (RTM 2010):
- Whole new PowerShell-based GUI console
- 85 PowerShell command-lets (CMDlets) for AD/LDS
- PowerShell will use AD Web Services and WCF
- Some of this stuff won’t work in Server Core (I’ve written off Core as a 1.0 product that should be avoided in 98% of cases. Eventually I think Core will just be Server w/o any added features.)
- Optional recycle bin (likely the most highly requested feature of AD in it’s 10 year life)
- New object type for service accounts (no password policy, no interactive logon)
- Offline domain join
- Built-in Best Practice Analyzer (love the Exchange, ISA, and SQL BPA’s)
Here’s a breakdown from TechEd EMEA
The Nikon D40 is a new member of our household. Now I wish we had bought it years ago. Took it to Zoe’s the other night, and the picture quality between it and my favorite pocket camera, the Sony DSC-100, are almost night and day better. I had no idea the difference it would make. Most of that may be due to the SB-400 flash and using “bounce” lighting, which I learned over at Ken’s site. BIG thanks to Ken and the amazing amount of Nikon material he’s got.
Ken’s right, that it’s so light it can be taken most places. It still won’t be my pocket-cam though (my definition for the camera you take anywhere, which is better then a phone camera but smaller then a SLR or camcorder).
How many emails have you sent, where you wished you could pull it back within seconds/minutes of clicking send? I call this the “Oh No Minute”, and Outlook can help.
I used an excellent idea found at the How-To Geek site for creating a rule to prevent the “Oh No!” reaction after sending an email you realize you didn’t mean to send. (i.e. forgot the attachment, left someone off the To: line, etc.). This rule will delay any message you send in Outlook for a period of time (in minutes). It will look like it sent, but actually is waiting in your Outbox.
I tweaked that rule a bit from the How-To above. First, mine is only 1 minute, not 5 as the tutorial above suggests. I find that you almost always “Oh No” with in 60 seconds. Second, I put in an exception to send right now if i mark the email as high importance (exclamation mark). Try it out!
I’ve used Humanized Enso for a year, and while I’ve uninstalled the other add-on’s for launching apps or searching… I’ve gotten used to it’s “hold down caps lock” interface and the spell check works 99% of time. However, it doesn’t always keep formatting after spell check in web-based text boxes that have formatting, and on Vista I’ve got what I assume to be a permissions issue since it won’t save my “add to dictionary” settings for custom words.
Since Enso is now free, I recommend you check out the Enso Words first. The hardest part is remembering it’s an option (since you don’t see anything until you hold down caps lock).
