Stellar Active Directory Manager

Transcription

1 Stellar Active Directory Manager What is the need of Active Directory Manager? Every organization uses Active Directory Services (ADMS) to manage the users working in the organization. This task is mostly handled by the IT administrator, who face the challenges of managing user accounts in Active Directory almost daily. The services prove to be very useful in the organisation with a limited number of users. However, in an organisation with a complex user network, managing user accounts is a difficult job. In such scenarios, configuring user properties manually is considered to be a daunting task for the administrator, as the process is extremely time consuming, tiresome, and are prone to errors. Moreover, the administrator requires to have a deeper knowledge of the ADMS Stellar Active Directory Manager is a simple, hassle-free web-based solution for all Active Directory challenges. It simplifies the the AD management and provide reports on tasks done as required. In addition, it is safe and provides a secure authentication. The software offers administrators a complete control over their Active Directory environment. It helps the administrators to design templates to manage all Active Directory account creation and modification processes. The tool can do all these with just few mouse clicks. What is Stellar Active Directory Manager? The Stellar Active Directory Manager is an innovative and user friendly tool for managing Microsoft's Active Directory service. The first release of the tool caters to ease various management operations of Active Directory. Active Directory is a directory service provided by Microsoft to manage objects in a domain network. This is accomplished by a service known as Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS). ADDS is a complex service and lacks user friendly approach. The Stellar Active Directory Manager is the solution to overcome the complexity of ADDS. It has features to manage Group Policies over a domain and generate reports based on the same. The solution also has an inbuilt feature to run queries on the Active Directory and supports bulk operations on the user account. The Registry entries can also be managed by it over a network. Problems Catered ADDS is a service for managing domains connected either locally or remotely. The Active Directory is a complicated tool which requires various inputs from the administrator. The software is intended to solve various problems of the Active Directory service as mentioned below. Solves the need for repetitive logon Enables bulk operation on objects (Security Principals and Resources) Manages registry entries for connecting domains from a single software Consumes less time for managing users and resources Salient Features Stellar Active Directory Manager is a web-based Active Directory software that

2 simplifies User provisioning and Active Directory administration with complete security and authentication. This tool can be used by any authorized user to perform management actions. It provides a complete set of Active Directory management tools to administrators and AD managers for efficient management of their Active Directory. The product has various features that make Active Directory management easy. The software features a single console from which IT management can view and manage Active Directory users, computers, contacts, groups and generate reports for all the domains, servers from a central location. It also enables the administrator to delegate repetitive, simple, time consuming tasks to non-administrative users / helpdesk in a completely secure manner and also allows for controlling automation of Active Directory. Thus it avoids manual, error prone administrative activities on Active Directory and saves time and cost. Some of the other prominent features offered by the Stellar Active Directory Manager are as follows: Support for various operations on User's, Group, Deleted Objects, Saved Query etc. Manages policies like Account and Audit on the server and target computers. Manages various resources like Printers and other devices remotely and locally. Manages Sessions, Services, Events and Disk Space on target computers. Enables Job scheduling and assign User rights. Query Active Directory for multiple users and computers Generates AD Reports. Platform Compatibility & Requirements The software is compatible between different versions of client operating system and server operating system. Systems having at least 1 GB of free space are required to install the software. However, 2 GB of free space is recommended to avoid any fuss. Software system requirements OS Servers: Windows 2003 Windows 2008 Client OS: Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 8 Hardware system requirements Processor requirements: x86 or x64

3 RAM: Minimum 1 GB, Recommended 2GB Features in detail: Computer Managing computers in bulk is a time consuming job in Windows Active Directory. It increases the complexity of the task as it allows to manage only one computer at a time. Stellar Active Directory Manager avoids this situation by allowing the administrator to manage multiple computers simultaneously. This helps in overcoming the shortcomings of the native Active Directory tools. The Stellar Active Directory Manager provides an easy way to manage all the computers in your environment from anywhere, at a time. It allows you to manage computers in the current domain or any remote domain. You can manage the domain by performing tasks like enable, disable or add computers. In addition, you can move the computers between organizational units and modify the general attributes like add jobs, run queries and many other tasks on single and bulk computers. The Key features of Computer are: Create New Computer: It allows you to create one or more computers. Once the computer is created you can view and modify the different system properties. Single Computer Properties: You can view and modify the different system properties. Single Computer : This option helps you to perform various tasks on one or more computers, which are part of the workgroup, current domain or a remote domain. Bulk Computer : As an administrator you can manage computers in bulk. You can select one or more computers from the list of computers available and perform different operations like Add/Remove Computers, Enable/Disable Computers, Move Computers etc. User It is always a challenge to manage large number of users in any organisation. Manual handling of the user account, especially in a complex organization network runs a risk of being error-prone. To perform such tasks the administrator needs to be very efficient, as it demands deep knowledge of the Active Directory Services. That is why managing user accounts in Microsoft Active Directory is considered to be a time consuming job for every IT administrator. Stellar Active Directory Manager is a simple tool to easily manage a large number of users. It has an easy-to-use interface, which allows to manage single as well as multiple users simultaneously and thus saves time and effort. It allows you to create and modify users in a single attempt. You can also configure their general attributes, terminal services attributes, and exchange attributes. The tool comes with a unique feature to create multiple templates, which can be used while creating users in bulk. The template contains standard user attribute values. You can import the user attributes from a single CSV file while creating user accounts. Moreover, the tool provides a report generation utility, which helps to manage the entire Active Directory proactively and efficiently. Some of the common Active Directory management functions that can be performed quickly and consistently include the following:

4 Create New User: You can either create users manually or you can create bulk users by importing.csv file. Single User Properties: This option set and modify the individual user attributes and reset password, rename user, move user to another container and enable or disable a user account. Single User : It helps the administrator to modify user attributes and reset password, rename user, move user to another container, etc. Bulk User : It allows you to create and manage multiple user accounts in the Active Directory at a single attempt. Group Policy Managing a group has been always more difficult than managing a user. Most of the administrator face difficulties in configuring groups and assigning various group attributes using native Active Directory tools. It often requires a complex procedure involving multiple steps for even a simple task. Stellar Active Directory Manager eases the complicated task of managing Active Directory Groups. You can easily create and modify groups by adding or removing bulk users. The tool simplifies the job of an administrator by making Group simpler. An administrator can perform all groups related operations from a centralized console at a single instance. The Stellar Active Directory Manager has a dedicated feature for Group, which creates and manages Security and Distribution Groups in Active Directory. Using this feature you can add or remove multiple group members, define various attributes, configure exchange attributes and import bulk users from a CSV file. The two important aspects of Group are: Create New Group: Creating a New Group is similar to creating a new user or a new OU. Bulk Group : Bulk Group allows you to add members, remove members from the selected groups, move groups to a different container, view group memberships, delete groups, copy groups to a server and copy members from a single group to multiple groups. Organization Unit Organizational Unit is an important part of the Active Directory system. Containers or Organizational Units (OUs) are used to implement objects as logical business units in Windows Active Directory. The tool displays all the user-defined and inbuilt OUs of the Container/OUs. This can be done by expanding the Containers/OUs node in the left tree panel. You can further further expand the inbuilt OUs to display logically grouped AD Objects. As an administrator you can set permissions and create containers for logical grouping. Creating Organizational Unit: You can create an Active Directory Organizational Unit with a specific name in a specific Active Directory folder. Container Properties: You can set and change the properties of Organizational Units like

5 Street, City, State, Country, etc. Managing Containers: This allows you to Move, Rename, Delete, and View a Container. Query Active Directory Manager supports a flexible search engine that is used to retrieve and display Active Directory information. You can use the Query option to retrieve information from All Users, All Groups objects and also from any of the containers. You can create new queries with custom filters. The new queries are saved and displayed in the left panel under the corresponding containers. Create a New Query: The option helps you to query Active Directory Group, Computer objects, and User Objects like first name, last name telephone, address and other details. Export a Query File: You can export a saved query from the current computer or domain to another computer. Import a Query File: This option allows you to import a saved query file from different computers or domains. View a Query: You can view the saved queries as required. Delete a Query: This option allows you to delete saved queries from a computer. Report Generation It is one of the most useful feature provided by the Stellar Active Directory Manager. Reports are used to provide information on different Active Directory objects. There are various types of reports meant for different purposes. For example, you can get the list of all inactive users from the inactive users report. At the same time you can modify the account status to active from the reports itself. This feature proves to be a great help to the administrators who are not experts in Active Directory. It solves all the difficulties faced by an administrator who is not aware of all the features provided by this tool. It addresses all the operations that are performed through the Stellar Active Directory Manager and the Reporting needs of IT administrators, IT Managers and an IT Auditors. Thus, the generated reports help to meet the demands of Compliance Audits. The report module also helps in generating Specialized and advanced reports on all the objects and accounts in all the networks and containers in the organization. Active Directory Reports on Inactive objects contain detailed information, which helps in deciding the objects to be cleaned, which are not in use. All this is possible from a single console in Stellar Active Directory Manager. Stellar Active Directory Manager, is considered as a complete Active Directory Reporting tool, which gives you a comprehensive list of organizational reports. It has an extensive reports list with over 150+ out of the box reports. Any users, with no prior knowledge of scripting can generate reports on Active directory services. The Active Directory Manager provides you with a number of report to work on. You can use the reports to assess and analyze the user account, groups, OUs & GPOs, printers, contacts, event logs and other details of your Active Directory. Some of the reports offered by the Stellar Active Directory Manager are mentioned below.

6 User Reports: Information like remote logon permission for remote users, mailbox enabled users, OMA / OWA enabled users, etc., can be generated. By default reports are generated for 30 days. However, you can customize a report for specified number of days. Group Reports: The Group reports enables the administrators to view the Security Groups, Distribution Groups, etc., in few clicks. OU and GPO Reports: Using OU Reports the administrator can look into all OUs, empty OUs, changed/modified Ous, etc.,. GPOs reports are available in a easily readable format, which helps the administrator to manage all the group policies. NTFS Reports: NTFS reports gives a clear insight of security settings at the file level. It generates reports of all NTFS folders and files in an easily understandable format. Exchange Reports: Exchange Reports are grouped into multiple categories like Distribution List Reports, Non-Distribution Reports etc. It displays the Exchange attributes of the users and members of the distribution and non-distribution lists. Computer Reports: It helps you to avoid writing the scripts manually to fetch all computer specific information and computer objects in domain. Contact Reports: These reports can be generated on demand for any specific container or domain. Printer Reports: This option allows you to view reports on all the domain printers. Event Log Reports: Event Log Report helps you view all the events performed using Stellar Active Directory software. One-Time Logon Log once and access all the domains and computers across the network. View System Information Stellar Active Directory Manager helps you view and modify the different system properties. The property pages include various tabs like Directory, Object and Member Of, Software, System, Environment, Network, and Dial-in. Configure Account Policy Policies are the primary ways to manage authentication on Windows based computers. Likewise, Active Directory also uses the policies for authentication. It affects the way user accounts can interact with the computer or domain. Since in Windows environment we have both local accounts and Active Directory domain accounts, it is very important to understand the effects of applying policies, i.e which all users are affected by Account Policies. Active Directory enforces just one set of Account Policies on all user accounts in a given domain. By examining the GPOs linked to the root of the domain, Active Directory can also determine the global Account Policies. However, it won't have any effect on domain user accounts. Moreover, a computer s local account policy only affects that computer s local account. That means any Account policies configured at the OU level will only impact the local account policy for computers within that OU. However, Account Policies configured in GPOs linked to OUs won't

7 have any effect on user accounts within those OUs. There are two ways to determine the Account Policies for a given domain. 1. You can manually inspect each GPO linked to the root of the domain in Active Directory Users and Computers. 2. Run gpedit.msc within a desired domain. You can do this by logging on to any domain controller. You can then select the local computer s policy object when prompted. The Account Policies you find here are the policies for all domain accounts within that domain, having applied all the GPOs linked to the domain root. Account policies contain two subsets: Password Policy It defines the time period, in days within which a password must be changed. If the user doesn't change the password within the given time period, the system will prompt the user to change the password. The policy also determines the least number of characters that the password may contain. Account Lockout Policy - Account Lockout Policy determines what happens when a user enters a wrong password. Configure Audit Policy Audit Policies are required for the information security in an organization. It is one of the most important Active Directory Services. It must be configured in any Active Directory environment. This ensures that the data relevant for audit are logged into the security logs. The Audit Policy can be configured for any desired computers / domain controllers. Stellar Active Directory Manager helps to collect and report audit data only for audit policy enabled computers. Any person with the administrator rights can configure Audit policy settings. It enables you to track security concerns and helps to ensure user accountability. In addition, you can specify whether to audit successes or failures for the specific access request to each user. The options for each of the audit settings are identical: Enable Auditing: This option helps in generating the audit event. However, no audit event is generated for the associated action if this option is not selected. Success: If the requested action succeeds, it generates an audit event. Failure: An audit event is generated when the requested action fails. Other Related Functions Active Directory Automation Manage directory attributes of any user Active Directory Logon Reports Rename user account

8 Move selected user from one container to another Copy selected user to another container Password Active Directory Workflow Comparative Checklist The following table shows the comparative list of the similar software with the features. Product Name Group Policy Bulk User Computer Query Report Generation Stellar Active Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Directory Manager AD Manager Yes Yes Yes No Yes Hyena Active Yes Yes Yes No Yes Directory Support and Active Administrator Yes No Yes No Yes