Windows 2000 & Active Directory

3H Technology (3H) recognizes that global enterprises require solutions that deliver faster time-to-market, reduced IT costs, and increased employee productivity. The explosive growth of network computing has created the need for powerful, transparent, and tightly integrated directory services to manage the identities and relationship of an organization's distributed network resources.

The directory service is the main switchboard of a network operating system. It manages the identities and brokers relationships between distributed resources. It is a repository that stores information about corporate and organizational assets such as applications, files, printers, and users. It provides a consistent method for naming, describing, locating, accessing, managing, and securing resource information. Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Active Directory™ service is an enterprise-class directory service that is scalable, built using Internet-standard technologies and delivered with Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. It is the consolidation point for isolating, migrating, centrally managing, and reducing the number of directories found in a network.

Active Directory is the focal point in a Windows 2000 Server network. Using it can simplify management, tighten security, and increase interoperability. 3H has experience in designing, implementing, and deploying Active Directory services to any enterprise environment while offering many advantages, including:

Manageability

• It allows your organization to efficiently share and manage information about network resources or users.
• It provides a single point of management for Windows 2000 Server user accounts, clients, servers, and applications.
• It can contain over one million objects of a business such as users, computers, printers, and application programs.

Security

• It acts as the central authority for network security, letting your operating system verify a user's identity and control access o network resources.
• It can be used to extend systems securely to the Internet.

Interoperability

• It helps to organize and integrate systems that aren't Windows-based and consolidates directories for easier management of the entire network.
• It increases the value of your existing network and lowers the overall cost of computing because it makes your current Windows network more manageable, secure, and interoperable.

3H supports a variety of incremental deployment options to meet individual customer needs. The deployment options for Windows 2000 range from simple deployment of Windows 2000 Professional, to adding new application servers in your existing environment, to deploying the advanced capabilities provided by the Windows 2000 Active Directory™ service.

3H can start by upgrading desktops to Windows 2000 Professional, which allows your users to quickly begin realizing the benefits of Windows 2000. 3H can move on to installing Windows 2000 Server quickly and easily in your existing Windows NT 4.0 domain environment, focusing for example on application servers and file and print servers. Ultimately the goal is to upgrade your Windows NT 4.0 domains to the new Windows 2000 domain architecture.

The following table depicts Windows 2000 available features without implementing Active Directory

3H can upgrade one, a few, or all of your member servers at a given time. Deploying Windows 2000 in an existing Windows NT 4.0-based environment is a straightforward process that provides immediate benefits. The deployment will also help you gain valuable experience with Windows 2000, which can prepare 3H for planning and deploying Active Directory.