Managing Active Directory for Windows 2000 Server covers Active Directory, what Microsoft calls the "next generation of Directory Services." Active Directory provides a single point of administration for Windows 2000 users and administrators. In NT 4, Directory Services were tools for organizing and managing certain objects in a computing system. Those objects are comprised of printers, documents, databases, email addresses, users and other resources.

Active Directory was created to handle the more complex objects of a networked environment. In addition to these objects, Active Directory will manage naming, querying, administrative, registration, and resolution needs.

* Includes coverage of vendor-specific implementations of Active Directory (such as Cisco and Oracle)
* Covers an integral part of the operating system and drills down to cover the directory services of Windows 2000

Topics covered include:
* Windows 2000 Support for open standards, DNS, and LDAP
* Support for standard name formats
* The Active Directory API
* Drag-and-drop administration
* Extensible schema
* The global catalog
* Backward compatibility with previous versions of NT 4
* Interoperability with NetWare