Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services for Windows 7 Available

In certain scenarios, corporate customers might decide that the complete infrastructure features of Active Directory is a bit too much for their needs, and that all that is actually needed are the directory services for applications. Designed as an independent mode of Active Directory, the Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services match the description above, and are available for download from Microsoft.

Essentially, the Redmond company is offering Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) for Windows 7 for customers running the latest iteration of the Windows client. It is important to note that unlike the past releases of AD LDS, the Windows 7 flavor is set up to leverage the feature set of Windows Vista’s successor. In this regard, AD LDS comes with support for Windows 7 Enterprise; Windows 7 Professional; and Windows 7 Ultimate.

“Although AD LDS independently provides directory storage and access for applications, AD LDS uses the same standard application programming interfaces (APIs) as Active Directory to manage and access the application data. The resulting conceptual and programming compatibility makes AD LDS ideal for applications that require directory services, but do not require the complete infrastructure features of Active Directory,” Microsoft stated.

Make no mistake about it. The ‘lightweight’ in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory service is more than living up to its promise. Customers will be able to take advantage of support for directory-enabled applications, but not in the context of all Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) required dependencies.

“AD LDS provides much of the same functionality as AD DS, but it does not require the deployment of domains or domain controllers. In environments where AD DS exists, AD LDS can use AD DS for the authentication of Windows security principals. You can run multiple instances of AD LDS concurrently on a single computer, and have an independently managed schema for each AD LDS instance,” the company explained.

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) for Windows7 is available for download here.