Microsoft posts stand-alone Active Directory
ENT News | at | by Mike
Microsoft has posted the bits for its stand-alone Active Directory, an out-of-band component of Windows Server 2003 that greatly expands the flexibility of Microsoft's directory services. Active Directory in Application Mode, or AD/AM, unties Active Directory from the server operating system and the domain structure -- addressing one of the big criticisms of Active Directory in the Windows 2000 release.
Key differences between AD/AM and the regular Active Directory are that AD/AM runs as an independent service instead of an operating system service, it is not required to run on a domain controller, it can be run in multiple instances on a single server and it will run on Windows XP for development and testing purposes.