Product Reviews
Tapping into Active Directory’s Full Potential
Once you set up AD, who’s going to maintain it all?
These four tools address delegation and management
challenges.
- By Chip Andrews
- 02/01/2001
OnePoint Directory and Resource Administrator
is a proxy-based AD delegation tool in the same
vein as bv-Admin. NetIQ, however, has thrown in
a few bells and whistles to sweeten the deal.
For example, the product features an excellent
HTML interface to ease the distribution of software
deployment for all the new delegation going on
in your enterprise, and it has a highly polished
look and feel. While the base Directory and Resource
Administrator product doesn’t work with Exchange
directories or perform migrations, NetIQ has product
offerings to fill those gaps if you need them.
OnePoint Directory and Resource Administrator
installation went without a hitch and even set
up Web-based administration pages and IIS metabase
settings. Reporting is implemented via a runtime
version of Microsoft Access. While this certainly
saved the developers at NetIQ some time, it does
leave the user with a somewhat disjointed experience
as remote users can’t as easily gain access to
reporting as they can to their administrative
tasks via the HTTP interface.
 |
| OnePoint Directory and Resource
Administrator has one of the better-designed
interfaces. (Click image to view larger version.) |
It’s obvious that more time and effort went into
the interface and usability of OnePoint Directory
and Resource Administrator than into several of
the other products reviewed combined! But potential
buyers are once again warned to make sure they
fully understand the repercussions and scalability
concerns of deploying a proxy solution before
heading down that road. I hope NetIQ will better
integrate reporting capability into its product;
but if you want a mature AD delegation tool, OnePoint
Directory and Resource Administrator shouldn’t
be overlooked.
About the Author
Chip Andrews, MCSE+I, MCDBA is a software security architect at (Clarus Corp.). Chip maintains the (sqlsecurity.com) Web site and speaks at security conferences on SQL Server security issues.