Active Directory discovery tools

[Cyber Nemesis]

I often walk into a new client environments to assest thier AD infrastructure and I am looking to expand the tools that are in my tool box.

I am wondering what other good nuggets people have used or are using to do around Active Directory discovery. I am not including specifics in my request because I am not looking to solve a specific problem, but instead asking in general what tools people use or have seen used. I would then like to review these tools for features, cost and decide if I may be able to leverage them.

For instance I normally use:

Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

Quest Reporter (trail)

Windows admin tools, support tools and resource kit tools

Sonar

The reason for my query is I just recently learned about ADMap, and instead had been doing that manually discovery for years. I felt pretty dumb and hope to extract other tools from this thread.

[bobbba]

The high end versions of MS Visio have AD and network discovery and docummenting features.

[Cyber Nemesis]

Good suggestion, look like they discontinued these feature in 2002.

Did some quick look in Visio 2007 help and came up with this:

"One question we hear often about Visio 2007 and Visio 2003 is "what happened to the Autodiscovery feature?"

The short answer is that it is no longer available. Neither Visio 2007 nor Visio 2003 can import directory services information, such as an existing Active Directory structure, and unless you buy a separate add-on, neither of them can discover and diagram a network using SNMP.

These features were part of the Visio Enterprise Network Tools add-on to Visio 2002 and Visio 2000 Enterprise Edition (but not Visio Professional 2002, Visio for Enterprise Architects, or Visio 2000 Professional Edition). "

[+BudMan MVC]

I use quite a few of the tools here

http://joeware.net/freetools/index.htm

They should be in any admins toolbox for sure!

[bobbba]

I use quite a few of the tools here

http://joeware.net/freetools/index.htm

They should be in any admins toolbox for sure!

Particualry like OLDCmp from there. very handy :)

[+BudMan MVC]

yup that one is very handy, couple of my favs from the list are auth and changepw. changepw is great for a mass change to the local admin account for example, when audit rules force you to change passwords every so often.

And auth is great for checking a password a user gives you when they say they can't get logged in and they know the password is right ;)

[]SK[]

That is a handy tool. I've had a few where they point blank refuse that the password I give them works. Usually I have to login remotely to prove it to them its right or even show them me typing it on their keyboard.

Bookmarked. Anymore? :D

[+BudMan MVC]

Yup the auth tool is GREAT for that since they can SEE the password on the screen and it coming back good or bad.

Well some of the tools on joeware could be used for discovery, etc. Thats not something I normally have to do, I understand the AD and its layout since I helped set it up, etc. Most side jobs I go into the AD structure is only at max a couple of sites, so again discovery is not really needed.

But here some more tools that again any admin should have in their tool belt.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

All the ones from joeware and here are on my thumbdrive ;) AD Explorer and AD Insight are 2 tools from sysinternals that are must for working with AD.

[technova]

There are other freeware utilities available specially designed for Active Directory. Chily provides whole set of AD freewares for - Active Directory query, DC monitoring, Local User Mangement, Offline Folder reporting.

User need not to spend a single penny on these little marvelous tools.

http://www.chilysoftware.com/free-tools.html