What does Y2K Active Directory actually do?

[ccantu at us.ibm.com]

In dealing with people who know alot more about W2K Server than I do, it's
been a relative consensus to NOT use Active Directory unless you absolutely
have to.  The advantage of AD is that your info will be replicated with
other W2K servers.  So say you create a shared directory on your server,
theoretically other W2K servers will see that automatically after about 15
minutes.  But this might happen if you don't have AD installed -- it's
still kind of nebulous in my mind.  What I can tell you is that
knowledgable people have warned me about AD and suggest not using it unless
you have to.

I however, installed it despite these warning because I have a need to play
with as many different features as I can get my fingers on.  I haven't seen
any problems that I feel are directly related to AD.

As for your problem -- W95/W98 can see the domain but W2K clients can not
-- it seems you've got some problem with the W2K clients and not the
server.  Can the same user log on from W98 AND W2K?  Probably not since W2K
clients aren't seeing the domain.  Try this:
   Create a new user on the server
   Create the same user on the W2K workstation
   Try logging in as that user

For some reason I think this helped me on a similar problem some time ago.
Since you don't have that many users, it might help you out.  It didn't
make sense to me why I needed to replicate the work on the workstation, but
it did.  The difference was I had a NT4 server and W2K clients.


---------------------- Forwarded by Carlos Cantu/Boulder/IBM on 07/21/2000
11:09 AM ---------------------------

MYCROFTXXX <mycroftxxx at attglobal.net>@isc.org on 07/21/2000 08:00:48 AM

Sent by:  bind-users-bounce at isc.org


To:   comp-protocols-dns-bind at moderators.isc.org
cc:
Subject:  What does Y2K Active Directory actually do?



My LAN runs BIND on a Solaris host.

A couple of months ago I migrated my NT Primary Domain Controller from NT4
to Win2K Server.

The logs on the Win2K server soon filled with messages griping about
my DNS server not recognizing certain commands. However, everything
seemed to work, until today. It's impossible for me to devote every
waking moment of my life to fine tuning Win2K, so I made a mental
note to get back to it later.

Looks like later arrived this morning when my NT domain disappeared,
at least from the perspective of my Win2K workstations. My Win95 and
Win98 hosts still find it.

My hunch is that Active Directory caused this whole issue.

So, I'm stuck with either eliminating the errors, or disabled Active
Directory all together.

I'm really leaning toward disabling it all together because I typically
use NT in the context of a small business (i.e. a LAN with at most a
few dozen users). You probably need to know that I'm self employed and
service small businesses.

So, my question, what exactly does Active Directory functionality do
for a small business?

Should I give it the old heave-ho and simply my life?

-MYCROFTXXX