Directory Services

ho:

Sempra Energy
101 Ash St., HQ01A
San Diego, CA 92101-3017

When: August 2007

What: The client needed to make many changes and clean up its Active Directory (AD) environment to meet Microsoft and new company standards.

The Challenge: Windows administrators over time inherited problems with AD, including but not limited to: mis-configurations, mis-applied security, mis-managed, unlinked, invalid, and orphaned GPOs, stale and invalid user and computer accounts, accounts where the password was never set, Domain Controllers hosting other services, missing business processes and undocumented procedures.

The Solution: A detailed assessment of AD's overall current health, along with recommendations for addressing the risks currently present, was completed.  This included a “current state” document written to identify the current design from which to make recommended changes. This document applies to the current state of core components and services, including: Domain Name Service (DNS), Windows Internet Name Service (WINS), and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Data was collected along with interview results and systematically analyzed. Significant gaps and opportunities for improvement were then made to clean up and improve AD's overall health.  

The Result: AD was effectively and efficiently cleaned up, adding top-notch security and compliance after tracing out all inactive/disabled accounts and expired users, and computers.  New housekeeping procedures were developed and training was provided, ensuring future changes (add, move, change) were made consistent with the new standards.  This resulted in an easier understanding of AD for administrators and enhanced the safety of the client's AD environment. AD's overall performance was improved, saving significant time by eliminating the unknowns that drove complexity.