Dean Wells started out Day 3 of DEC 2008 with a recap of the Dean and Joe show. He finished up the demo of “how exactly the FSMO role works” which was amazingly detailed and deep. He also explained more about AdminSDHolder and showed off several of Joe Richard’s tools. They also showed some info about how to read deep into the DIT itself that I found really interesting. Yes, I’ve now dumped my test network’s AD database and read it with their tools.

Don Jones had the next session, but I had to skip out on it to prepare for my session. I did hear some great feedback, but was disappointed, since his was one of the sessions I was most looking forward to prior to the conference start.

I spoke at 11am about how to integrate Linux/Unix systems with Active Directory. Download the deck here. It was a great experience, and the bit of feedback I’ve heard so far has been really positive.  It sounds like several attendees have moved their integration projects forward with information I presented, so I think it was successful.

After lunch, the Microsoft Windows and Active Directory product teams had a chalk talk about what’s next with AD where they solicited a LOT of suggestions from the attendees.  I was surprised by the number of people who are using “Prune and Graft” techniques for domain migrations.  Microsoft was very clear, however: do not EVER prune and graft domains.

And I’ll leave it at that.  In all, in was a great experience, and I learned so much.  I’m going to go back again!