Discover your AD Through LDAP
Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer is an excellent tool from Microsoft that lets you read your Active-Directory topology (Domains, OUs, Sites, Exchange servers, DFS-R, etc.) by simply querying all the information through LDAP and drawing a Microsoft Visio diagram for you. Although some people can consider this a handicap, it is not; simply download the 60-days trial of Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 and that’s it, you will be able to get you AD drawn in few clicks.
First of all, review the requirements and download it here. Installation is very straight forward doesn’t make any sense to explain it. Once installation is finished open the application by going to Start , All Programs and click Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer.
Once opened, verify the Visio draws output location, by going to Tools, Options and File Location tab; there you have the path where MADTD will store the draws.
Interface is so user-friendly and is so easy to use. First type the name of the server you will query to obtain the data; it should be a global catalog server (Domain Controller) or the FQDN of your domain (mydomain.net).
Secondly, select what you want to scan (Domain, OUs, Sites, Exchange, Applications, DFS-R or Servers) and the detailed parts like Cross Forest Trust for Domains, etc..
Click Discover!. Once the application have read you AD information simply click Draw! and Microsoft Visio will open automatically and draw the diagram for you!.
You can use these diagrams to totally or partially integrate them with System Center Operations Manager to build dashboards that provide real-time infrastructure monitoring information, so that you can use them from your Visio or from SharePoint Services 2010.
Add-ins for Visio and MOSS and step by step guides are here: