I recorded a webinar for TechTarget today titled "16 Simple Steps to a Healthier and Happier Active Directory". I had really wanted to get it down to 10 steps, or maybe 12 steps: "My name is Gil and I don't know which of my DCs are FSMO role owners." "Hi Gil!"
But it came out pretty well I think. The basic premise is that in a lot of smaller organizations the AD guy is also the Exchange guy, the SQL guy, and the Sharepoint guy, etc. and is not necessarily an AD guru. And he spends so much time fighting fires he never has a chance to get on top of the AD issues that might be causing a lot of the fires. My goal was to provide a step-by-step program to get AD under control, cleaned-up, and secure, so that the admin can spend more time fighting Exchange fires.
The result was a 4 phase process: Discover, Repair, Cleanup, and Secure. The Discover phase included mapping the AD infrastructure and checking the event logs for problems. The Repair phase included repairing DNS, replication, FRS, GPOs, and DC performance. The Cleanup phase included simplifying and consolidating the infrastructure, cleaning up admin groups, stale accounts, and delegation, and the Secure phase included locking down DCs, tightening GPO settings, implementing a DR plan, monitoring AD health, auditing AD changes, and developing structured AD admini processes.
I don't know for sure when TechTarget will post the recorded webinar, probably at the end of January or the beginning of December.