Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

[Guest Jgregson]

Firstly - My applogies if this is posted to the incorrect place. I ment nothing by it.

 

With regards to Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer.

http://www.groovypost.com/howto/microso ... matically/

 

I can only connect to the Domain in question via a VPN and the servers are locked down - so I can not install Visio

 

So my question is:

Is there a way that this tool can collect the data. I get this data back to my workstation (Which has Visio 2003 installed) and then generate the diagrams?

 

Many thanks and Kind regards

 

Jason

[Steve Krause]

Ideally, you should not be installing the Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool on a server. The main reason is you probably don't have Visio installed on a server and that's a requirement. Second, the more software you install on a server the more unstable it becomes and Servers are typically what keep your business running so be careful. You probably know this but I thought I would throw it out there.

 

So now to your question:

 

I can only connect to the Domain in question via a VPN and the servers are locked down - so I cannot install Visio

 

So my question is:

Is there a way that this tool can collect the data. I get this data back to my workstation (Which has Visio 2003 installed) and then generate the diagrams?

 

From what I've been able to dig into, the tool MUST be ran from a workstation with VISIO installed. There does appear to be a command line interface where you can execute the tool and have it run and scan the environment however, once all the data is collected it tries to launch Visio in order to actually create the drawing for you. Without Visio, it just dies and none of the data created in the .vsd.

 

8:27:17 AM: Paint:Init: Is Visio already started ?
8:27:17 AM: Paint:Init: Open Visio Application
8:27:36 AM: Paint:Init: Could not start Microsoft Visio: Cannot create ActiveX component.
8:27:36 AM: Paint:Init: Not Successful !!!
8:27:36 AM: ADTD ended Domain Drawing: 1/18/2008 8:27:36 AM

 

Now, all the being said.... It looks like some of the data collected is copied to the ADTD.log file which by default is copied to the "My Documents" folder here: "%userprofile%\my documents". Give it try using the following command line parameters.

 

 

adtd /domain /site /ou /exchange /u "domain\admin" /p "adminpassword"

 

Let me know what happens!

[alexmvp]

BTW - I've played with this for "hours" and I've found that you MUST have ADTD installed to get this to work.

 

Just my 2 cents!