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*********In Progess – Need to build an additional Exchange server to display the Exchange results********

Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

Introduction

Every consultant needs a standard set of discovery tools. I like to go on the Hugh Laurie (House) principal, “Everybody lies”. Everytime I visit a new customer, I like to do my own discovery on their systems. One of the tools I cannot do without is the Active Directory Topology. You can download the tool here.

Running Windows 7 in as a VPC on a laptop is an easy way to join a workstation to the client domain. A VPC is the easiest way to avoid issues with your laptop as the client may have configured GPOs or logon scripts in the domain where the discovery is being performed. They may also have other security requirements for any machine to join the domain which you may not want to apply to your laptop.

Prequisites: Microsoft Visio

1. Download the ADTD file (ADTD.Net Setup.msi) and double-click.
2. Click Next
3. Agree to the license
4. Select the installation folder and click Next
5. Confirm installation and click Next
6. Click Finish

Find the application on the start menu and click.

Select all the required options on all the tabs and click Discover. If a DC is not entered into the Server field, you may see some errors.

The output (depending on selected options) will look as follows:

OUs

The OUs will be displayed in Visio. Large numbers of OUs will be printed on top of each other. The best thing to do in that case is to increase the Visio page size and arrange the OUs and containers in a more readable manner.

Domains

All domains will be displayed in the resulting Visio diagram

NOTE: This sample was generated in a lab with only one DC.

Application Partitions

The only application partitions are in the lab was created for DNS.

The most useful page is the AD Sites. This page will contain all the AD links. In many cases, clients have configured site links incorrectly. This is especially important where Exchange 2010 will be deployed as Exchange 2010 uses the Active Directory Site links.