Whats new in Windows 2016 Directory Services

Whats new in Windows 2016 Directory Services

Windows 2016 will be released later this year and along with it a few additions will be added to the Directory Services piece. Below are a few of the notable additions that i am looking forward to.

New Features
1. Group Membership Expiration - You will be able to add a user to a group for a certain period of          time. The one drawback is this feature requires windows server 2016 functional level.
2. Azure AD Join -
3. Deprecation of the File Replication service
4. Deprecation of Windows Server 2003 Functional Level

Configuring AD LDS to sync with Multiple AD Domains

Problem

- You have user accounts in two domains that you would like to be able to authenticate from an application that can only look at one LDAP server at a time.

Prerequisites
- Windows 2008 R2
- 2 Active Directory Domains with a trust between the two

Solution:

Autologon with Active Directory Domain Account

Follow the steps below to configure a Windows 7 that is on a domain to automatically login using a domain account. **Note: This is a HORRIBLE idea, however someone out there may have a need to do this so i am posting the steps that worked for me.

Steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. In Windows Vista/7, simply typeregedit in Start Search and hit Enter. 
2. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon 
3. Double-click the DefaultUserName entry, type the user name to log on with, and then click OK. If DefaultUserName registry value name is not found, create a new String Value (REG_SZ)with value name as DefaultUserName. 
4. Double-click the DefaultPassword entry, type the password for the user account under the value data box, and then click OK. If there is no DefaultPassword value, create a new String Value (REG_SZ) with DefaultPassword as the value name. Note that if no DefaultPassword string is specified, Windows automatically changes the value of the AutoAdminLogon registry key from 1 (true) to 0 (false) to turn off theAutoAdminLogon feature. 
5. In Windows Vista/7, DefaultDomainName has to be specified as well, else Windows will prompt for invalid user name with the user name displayed as .\username. To do so, double click onDefaultDomainName, and specify the domain name of the user account. If it’s local user, specify local host name.If the DefaultDomainName does not exist, create a new String Value (REG_SZ) registry key with value name as DefaultDomainName. 
6. Double-click the AutoAdminLogon entry, type 1 in the Value Data box, and then click OK. If there is no AutoAdminLogon entry, create a new String Value (REG_SZ) withAutoAdminLogon as the value name. 
7. If it exists, delete the AutoLogonCount key. 
8. Quit Registry Editor. 
9. Restart Computer