Test Windows AD Integration on a workgroup machine.

Question

Is there a dev aid that can simulate Windows AD on a non-domain machine, aka my dev laptop?

Answer 1

Yes, to a certain degree, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS - formerly known as AD/AM), can do this.

It's a Windows service that you can install, start and stop on a dev machine and that works very closely like the "real" Active Directory.

There are some limitations - see the MSDN docs for details.

Marc

UPDATE: AD LDS comes with Win Server 2003 R2 and Win Server 2008, or can be downloaded under its old name AD/AM (Active Directory/Application Mode) for Windows XP and WinServer 2003 from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9688F8B9-1034-4EF6-A3E5-2A2A57B5C8E4&displaylang=en

Answer 2

Depends what you want to do. If you just want to do LDAP queries then ADAM/ADLDS will do the trick. If you need the security-related aspects of AD, then no.

One possible solution is to run Virtual PC or VMware and on the laptop and have a virtualised workstation to use for your AD integration testing. In that case, I might consider also going for 2008 (R2?) on the laptop and using Hyper-V.