Re-Planting All Your Trees in One Forest: Deploying an Enterprise Wide Active Directory at Penn State

Abstract

Four years ago Penn State's Identity Services department was issued a herculean task; to deploy a centralized, enterprise wide Active Directory. The project was given a five-year goal to move from an underutilized central service with departments and colleges who had been hosting their own domains to one centrally managed service with university wide buy in. We are now closing in on our five-year goal and are in the final phases. This paper will explore why this goal was set, how we went about tackling such a massive scope, where we are now, what we have left, the mistakes made, and some of the lessons learned along the way