Microsoft Active Directory Reviews

Microsoft Active Directory is an authentication infrastructure.

The most valuable feature of the solution is authentication.

The solution should maintain the infrastructure according to the period you are in and the security changes.

I have been using Microsoft Active Directory for 18 years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Around 50,000 users are using the solution in our organization. I use the solution on a daily basis.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution's initial setup depends on how you want to deploy it. On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight out of ten if you want to deploy it in a better way.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten.

The solution's group policy is a normal way to deploy configuration and helps deploy to a wider environment. The solution is deployed both on-premises and on the cloud. I would recommend the solution to other users based on their infrastructure.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is very easy to use. The user interface of the product is very easy to use.

Most of the features of the product are not implemented in our company because every employee is involved in their own research and development activities. Microsoft Active Directory restricts most of the features our company's employees want to use since they are involved in research and development activities. The tool should not restrict functions or features for users, and it can be considered as an area for improvement.

I have been using Microsoft Active Directory since 2013.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Every person in my company, which includes around 800 employees, uses the solution.

The tool is extensively used, and there are plans to increase the use of the solution in the future.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

There are people working on three or four levels in our company involved in the deployment and maintenance process, which includes a manager, a project leader, a project engineer, and a junior engineer.

The deployment process can be carried out with the help of our company's in-house team.

As per the market standard, I would want the current prices of the product to remain the same.

The solution streamlined our company's user management and authentication since it helps us to monitor user activities.

The solution's ability to support our organization's device and user access control stems from the fact that there is a need for us to manage the hierarchy in our company. My company has different hierarchies, so we have used Microsoft Active Directory to manage the hierarchy level in our organization.

I recommended the product to those who plan to use it to use the tool to monitor and analyze the use of devices and data by employees.

The solution's scalability and maintenance help grow our business environment. Since we are an organization that works five days a week, the maintenance part is taken care of on Saturdays or Sundays, which may fall on the second or fourth week of the month. My company regularly maintains and updates the product.

The benefit from the use of the product stems from the fact that it helps our company to monitor and verify the details of employees.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

We are still on a hybrid environment where we have Azure Directory on-premises, and sync it up to Microsoft.

The password policy helps enforce security protocols by requiring complex passwords and frequent password changes. Additionally, we do not allow users to reuse their last twelve passwords.

The features that I found most effective are the group policies. They allow us to set password policies and other specific setups in the end-user object.

The challenges everyone now has in mind is how to really migrate fully to the cloud. Many companies face both technical and cost-related challenges when moving from on-premise Active Directory to Microsoft Intra. Additionally, not all features available on-premises, such as the RADIUS server, are available in the cloud, necessitating alternative solutions. Moreover, the cost of migrating to the cloud is a significant hurdle due to the yearly subscription fees.

I have been using the solution for around ten years.

We have no complaints regarding the stability of the solution. I would rate the stability nine out of ten.

I rate the scalability a seven out of ten. There are many dependent objects to check, such as compatibility of RADIUS servers, which require time and technical checks.

I have contacted Microsoft support before. The experience can vary; sometimes it is good, and other times it is bad. Much depends on the help desk. My rating for tech support is five out of ten. 

One recommendation for improvement is that support should correspond with the preferred mode of communication indicated in the ticket. Additionally, they should be aware of user time zones to avoid calling at inconvenient times.

Neutral

I have used Microsoft Active Directory and Google.

I have seen value in using Microsoft Active Directory. While it may not return a direct financial ROI, it is a critical part of our infrastructure alongside other solutions like Google Directory.

Microsoft Active Directory can be a suitable choice if you want a suite of Microsoft products like PowerPoint and other Office tools. However, the choice between Google and Microsoft depends on the company's nature of business.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

I use Microsoft Active Directory as the first line in the LDAP directory. You can use the solution to manage computer accounts, user accounts, and other objects. You can also use Microsoft Active Directory to build roles and permissions.

The solution is widely used in Microsoft environments, where you use computers with the Microsoft OS. The solution is easy to install and has good reliability. With Microsoft Active Directory, you won't have any problems if one of the domain controllers is damaged. The tools you use to maintain and manage Microsoft Active Directory are not complicated.

The solution could be made more safe by using authentication mechanisms. We often have to deal with security issues.

I have been using Microsoft Active Directory for 20 years.

The solution has some bugs, but from my point of view, they are not really important.

More than 1,00,000 users are using the solution in our organization.

Microsoft Active Directory is not an expensive solution. You have to buy the Windows OS licenses, but you don't have to pay any additional product licenses for Active Directory.

You have to build an environment after considering all your requirements. It is really important to consider your organizational structure and the possibilities of the tools you use to authenticate against Active Directory. Microsoft Active Directory is so easy to install. You can promote the domain controller and then have an Active Directory.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to control environments for different servers.

The solution's most valuable feature is access control and integration with different applications.

The solution is complicated to navigate. We encounter issues while changing the settings. They should improve these particular features.

We have been using the solution for seven or eight years.

The solution is relatively stable.

It is a scalable solution. We can create multiple active directories using it.

The complexity of the solution's initial setup process depends on the environment. It takes a couple of weeks for simple setups and around a month for complicated structures.

We implement the solution with the help of our in-house team.

We have to purchase a license for the solution.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. It works well in terms of functions and regular backups of the configuration.

Microsoft Active Directory is used to centrally manage all objects and provide access. It also serves as the authentication mechanism for most of our Windows and non-Windows applications using Kerberos. User and device management are also handled through Active Directory.

One of the most valuable features of the solution that I like is that it allows our company to apply GPOs properly to many users.

The GUI of Microsoft Active Directory is very basic. At our company, we can go for automation since we don't have many tasks. In the solution, assigning permissions is complex, making it difficult to grant them at a granular level or to multiple users without templates or alternative tools. Although achieving the RBAC or Zero Trust model is challenging due to the same limitations in Microsoft Active Directory, third-party tools are available to assist with this task. Even the Native Azure AD does not have these capabilities.

I do have experience with Microsoft Active Directory. Our company is a customer of the solution. Also, I have been using this solution for maybe eight to ten years. I am using the solution's latest version.

For stability, on a scale where one is not stable and ten is very stable, I rate this solution a seven since there are issues. The solution has its own set of issues concerning patches, compatibility issues, and a few more things. The few other issues are something that actually depends, in a sense, that every month, they roll out the patches, and then they try to close the vulnerabilities, creating issues. So, maybe encryption, and also there are many things.

The scalability of the solution is high. Scalability-wise, I rate this solution may be above eight out of ten. There are around 4,00,000 users of this solution.

The solution is used very often, daily, since it serves as a primary tool for various tasks, including authentication and other functions. At present, we do not plan to increase the number of users using the solution, as we are trying to reduce the footprint.

I rate the technical support for the solution between six to seven out of ten. While technical support is proactive, there are times when we cannot get through a call and don't always receive the support we expect from Microsoft's technical support team.

Neutral

The initial setup of the solution is easy, and I would rate it an eight or nine out of ten on a scale of one to ten, where one being difficult and ten being easy.

The deployment time of the solution varies depending on the team responsible for it. Since it's not primarily our team's responsibility, I'm unsure of the exact time required for deployment. I don't think more than one person is required for the entire deployment process. The number of people required to maintain the solution depends on the company's size.

The solution is worth the money paid for it.

I'm unsure about the cost of the solution, as I was never involved in that aspect. However, I don't think it would be expensive. It might be average, around four or five out of ten. I believe the licensing costs are volume licensing for on-premises, so it shouldn't be monthly. I think it's a one-time purchase for the server, and it comes with the necessary licenses. We don't have to buy any additional licenses.

My advice for those planning to use Microsoft Active Directory as a solution is that it is a scalable and stable platform that has been used for many years. It is a necessary tool for companies using Windows-based operating systems to manage their objects. Overall, I rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Active Directory has been a valuable tool throughout my career in IT. We have not found anything that can compete with it in terms of functionality or solutions. With Active Directory, we can manage users, groups, and machines, add domains and forests and create trust relationships between domains. This is just a small sampling of what Active Directory can do. Windows Server is a great platform on which Active Directory is built.

The solution helped us create and modify objects for each user in our environment. We gave them the delegation and permission they needed based on their function. It was very helpful, especially in managing these users on each site. We were able to implement domain controllers as a primary and additional domain controller as a redundancy for each other. We were also able to create users and additional UUs. It depends on the departments, the business need, and the group policies that we are going to apply.

We can delegate the administration of Active Directory objects and apply group policies to groups of OUs. This is the best way to manage Active Directory. We can also have separate domain controllers in different Active Directory sites based on their location. We manage replication between sites through Active Directory sites and services. We can provide insight into what is being done, which will replicate across these domain controllers in just a few seconds. This will ensure that our data or any modifications, any creations have been replicated successfully to the other domain controllers.

There is no room for improvement because Microsoft's solutions have moved from on-prem to the cloud. We won't see any improvement or enhancement in these on-prem solutions because, according to the Microsoft websites, all the information related to Active Directory and Windows Server has been retired and there is no more information about it. Microsoft has discontinued the solution and moved on. Microsoft has verified that all on-prem solutions will stop receiving support by 2030. 

The GUI has been the same from 2012 to 2016, and from 2019 to 2022. If Microsoft is going to add anything to the on-prem solution, it should be an updated GUI. 

I have been using the solution for six years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability a nine out of ten.

The Microsoft Support team often lacks the ability to provide timely support. Their response time is often slow, which can be frustrating for customers.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I am very familiar with the solution and the setup is a piece of cake. 

I give the ease of setup a ten out of ten.

I have seen a return on investment with the solution.

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

We need to know how many domain controllers we require in our environment in order to create a primary and redundant domain controller. Additionally, we need to follow a naming convention to avoid duplicate users and misspellings. The number and size of RAMs needed for our Active Directory will depend on our workload. We need to design our Active Directory well to ensure a good experience.

Our primary use case is to inform the user of access and single sign-on support to the internet.

The most valuable features are it is easy to use, manage, create a repository, and create the OM.

I would like to see the integration with Mac and IOS products improved. I would also like to have some similar functionalities in the on-premise solution that they have on the cloud solution.

I have been using Microsoft Active Directory for the past six to seven years.

Microsoft Active Directory is a stable solution and there are patches available when there are issues.

There is definitely scalability, we currently have around one thousand six hundred users.

Customer support is available however going directly to a technician is not our primary support option. We are able to use online forums and documentation before we involve a customer service technician.

Positive

In most cases the initial setup is straightforward. If you work in a greenfield environment, then it is easy to perform. But if you are using any previous products like the earlier versions of Microsoft Active Directory, then it is actually difficult to take the downtime and then reconfigure the Microsoft Active Directory on the new server and then re-implement the users in it. The initial migration is complex and challenging, but the greenfield implementation is okay.

The license is perpetual and the cost is minimal. If you purchase Microsoft Windows then Microsoft Active Directory comes with the package.

I think it is highly recommended to use Microsoft Active Directory knowing how it operates. I would rate Microsoft Active Directory an eight out of ten.