ISA 2006 Authentication over HTTP

I implemented different ISA 2006 Reverse Proxy servers in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange 2003 or Windows Exchange 2007.
Today I configured ISA 2006 with Exchange 2007. I configured the Reverse Proxy server as I did always. And the connection from outside the network works perfectly. On the internal Exchange server I configured Basic and Integrated Authentication on the OWA virtual directory. The problem is that internal users now automatically log in to their webmail box when entering the URL from the Exchange server.
This is not the desired configuration, because internal users should be able to open other people’s mailboxes by logging in as that user. The customer also has an ISA 2006 on the internal network for forwarding proxy purposes.
I decided to publish Exchange 2007 on the internal ISA 2006 server as well. The configuration should use Form Based Authentication (FBA) over HTTP. After configuring and trying the connection, the user can’t access the ISA logon page. In the logging you find that Authentication over HTTP isn’t allowed.

Error Code: 403 Forbidden. ISA Server is configured to block HTTP requests that require authentication. (12250)

This is a default setting in ISA 2006 which can be disable. To allow Authentication over HTTP go to the Listener configuration. Go to the Authentication tab and Select Advanced. In the next tab enable the option Allow client authentication over HTTP. This option enables the using FBA over HTTP.

 booches.nl

Active Directory restores: How to restore deleted objects

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 allow you to restore deleted objects back to the Active Directory. In this article, I will demonstrate an Active Directory restore with a combination of authoritative and non-authoritative techniques.
A non-authoritative restoration is a process in which the domain controller is restored, and then the Active Directory objects are brought up to date by replicating the latest version of those objects from other domain controllers in the domain.
An authoritative restore is an operation in which the data that has been restored takes precedence over the data that exists on other domain controllers in the domain. When you perform an authoritative restore, the current versions of objects in the Active Directory are overwritten by the versions of the objects which were restored.
This process works the same way regardless of how you made the backup or where the data is being restored from. The Active Directory objects that have been restored are assigned a new version number, which ensures that the Active Directory replication process will overwrite the existing Active Directory objects with the objects that have been restored. This process is completely automated and it affects all of the domain controllers in the domain.
Performing the restoration
The restoration process is performed from the command line. To begin, you’ll need to know the name of the object that you plan to restore, as well as that object’s location within the Active Directory.
Because we are restoring an object that has been previously overwritten or deleted, we will have to perform an authoritative restore. That way the item that you have restored will not be overwritten by a newer copy during the Active Directory replication process.
However, we can’t just jump right in to an authoritative restoration, because the entire Active Directory would be rolled back to a previous state and defeat the purpose of performing a granular restoration.
To keep that from happening, we’ll perform a non-authoritative restore of the entire Active Directory. After doing so, we can make the restoration authoritative for the specific object that needs to be restored.
Performing a non-authoritative restoration
There are a variety of methods for performing the initial non-authoritative restore. The easiest way to complete this process is to stop the Active Directory Domain Services and then restore a valid system state. To stop the Active Directory Domain Services you will need to open an elevated command prompt and then enter the following command:
Net Stop NTDS
As you can see in Figure A, shutting down the Active Directory Domain Services causes several other dependency services to stop as well. The dependency services that are affected by this operation include:

Kerberos Key Distribution Center
Intersite Messaging
DNS Server
DFS Replication
Once the Active Directory Domain Services have been stopped, you can restore a System State backup. When the restoration process completes, you will likely be prompted to reboot your server. You should avoid rebooting because doing so will cause the Active Directory Domain Services to be restarted, which will cause your restoration to be overwritten.
Performing an authoritative restore
Before the server is rebooted, we need to tell Windows which Active Directory object needs to be restored authoritatively. This can be accomplished by using the NTDSUTIL utility. You can begin the process by entering the following commands:
Ntdsutil
Activate Instance NTDS
Authoritative Restore
Although not technically required, I recommend entering the LIST NC CRs command at this point. This command will list the various Active Directory partitions and their cross references. It allows you to validate that you are about to perform an authoritative restore within the correct Active Directory partition, as shown in Figure B.

Now it’s time to specify the object that needs to be restored. You can do so by using the Restore Object command. For example, suppose that you wanted to restore a user account named User1 that existed in the Users container in a domain named Contoso.com. To perform such a restoration, you would use the following command:
Restore Object “CN=User1,CN=Users,DC=Contoso,DC=com”
Wrapping it up
Now that you have marked the object that needs to be restored, the only thing that is left do is to restart the Active Directory Domain Services. This can be accomplished by entering the following command:
Net Start NTDS
When the Active Directory Domain Services start, the object that you restore will be replicated to the other domain controllers in the domain.
About the author: Brien M. Posey, MCSE, has previously received Microsoft's MVP award for Exchange Server, Windows Server and Internet Information Server (IIS). Brien has served as CIO for a nationwide chain of hospitals and has been responsible for the Department of Information Management at Fort Knox. You can visit Brien's personal website at www.brienposey.com.

How to Backup and Restore Active Directory on Server 2008

Have you ever accidentally deleted a user account or an OU in Active Directory and wished you could restore it?
I recently had a client call me after they installed updates and rebooted their server. They noticed after the reboot that there was a message that said “Active Directory is rebuilding indices. Please wait”.
Their Active Directory database had become corrupted from the updates. So what do you do? How can you restore AD?
Let’s talk about how to backup AD in Windows Server 2008 and how to restore it. Today I’ll show you:

• what you need to do to get your Server 2008 ready for backup
• how to backup Active Directory on Server 2008
• how to perform an Authoritative Restore of Active Directory
• how to perform Active Directory Snapshots

Prerequisites: Getting Server 2008 Ready for Backup

Before you can backup Server 2008 you need to install the backup features from the Server Manager.
1. To install the backup features click Start → Server Manager.


2. Next click Features → Add Features



3. Scroll to the bottom and select both the Windows Server Backup and the Command Line Tools



4. Click Next, then click Install

Backing up Server 2008 Active Directory

Now that we have the backup features installed we need to backup Active Directory. You could do a complete server backup, but what if you need to do an authoritative restore of Active Directory?
As you’ll notice in Server 2008, there isn’t an option to backup the System State data through the normal backup utility.



So what do we do? We need to go “command line” to backup Active Directory.
1. Open up your command prompt by clicking Start and type “cmd” and hit enter.
2. In your command prompt type “wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:e:” and press enter.
Note: You can use a different backup target of your choosing
3. Type “y” and press enter to start the backup process.



When the backup is finished running you should get a message that the backup completed successfully. If it did not complete properly you will need to troubleshoot.



Now you have a system state backup of your 2008 Server!

Authoritative Restore of Active Directory

So now what if you accidentally delete an OU, group, or a user account and it’s already replicated to your other servers? We will need to perform an authoritative restore of the Active Directory object you accidentally deleted.
1. To do this you will need to boot into DSRM (Directory Services Restore Mode) by restarting your server and pressing F8 during the restart.
2.Choose Directory Services Restore Mode from the Advanced Boot menu.



3. Login to your server with your DSRM password you created during Active Directory installation.
4. Once you’re logged into your server and in DSRM safe mode, open a command prompt by clicking Start, type “cmd“, and press enter.
5. To make sure you restore the correct backup it’s a good idea to use the “wbadmin get versions” command and write down the version you need to use.



6. Now we need to perform a non-authoritative restore of Active Directory by typing “wbadmin start systemstaterecovery -version:04/14/2009-02:39“.
Note: The version of backup will vary depending on your situation. Type “y” and press enter to start the non authoritative restore.
7. Go grab some coffee and take a break while the restore completes.



8. You can mark the sysvol as authoritative by adding the –authsysvol switch to the end of the wbadmin command.



9. But if you want to restore a specific Active Directory object then you can use the ever familiar ntdsutil.
For this example we are going to restore a user account with a distinguished name of CN=Test User,CN=Users,DC=home,DC=local. So the commands would be:

ntdsutil
activate instance ntds
authoritative restore
restore object “cn=Test User,cn=Users,dc=home,dc=local”

Note: The quotes are required



10. Reboot your server into normal mode and you’re finished. The object will be marked as authoritative and replicate to the rest of your domain.

Using Active Directory Snapshots

There is a really cool new feature in Windows Server 2008 called Active Directory Snapshots. Volume Shadow Copy Service now allows us to take a snapshot of Active Directory as a type of backup. They are very quick to create and serve as another line of defense for your backup strategy.
With your server booted into normal mode open a command prompt by clicking Start, type “cmd“, and press enter.
We are going to use the ntdsutil again for creating the Active Directory snapshots. The commands are:

ntdsutil
snapshot
activate instance ntds
create
quit
quit

So now that you have a snapshot of AD, how do you access the data? First we need to mount the snapshot using ntdsutil. The commands are:

ntdsutl
snapshot
list all
mount 1 — (Note: You should mount the correct snapshot you need; for this example there is only 1.)
quit
quit

Your snapshot is mounted, but how do you access the data? We need to use the dsamain command to accomplish this. Then we need to select an LDAP port to use. The command is as follows:

dsamain –dbpath c:\$SNAP_200905141444_VOLUMEC$\WINDOWS\NTDS\ntds.dit –ldapport 10001

The result should look like this:



Now we need to go to Start, Administrative Tools, then Active Directory Users and Computers.
Right click Active Directory Users and Computers and select Change Domain Controller.



In the area that says < Type a Directory Server name [:port] here > enter the name of your server and the LDAP port you used when running the dsamain command.
For my example it would be: WIN-V22UWGW0LU8.HOME.LOCAL:10001



Now you can browse the snapshot of Active Directory without affecting anything else negatively.

Your AD Backup Strategy

It’s always good to have a solid backup plan for your Active Directory. You can use a combination of backup strategies or just one of these methods for backing up your Active Directory.
Make sure you tailor your Active Directory backup strategy to meet your company’s needs and make it easy to recover if disaster does strike.

Trainsignal.com