Hi guys,

I'm reading up on Active Directory before I start coding in it with C# and I had a question. Their isn't any online resource of Active Directory which has a list of items I am guaranteed to be able to extract from Active Directory. For example, if I am extracting data from the Active Directory of a company XYZ I am guaranteed name, email id, IP address of computer. But what else can I get? Rather what are the assets that aren't guaranteed but after some hard work I can find on Active Directory.  I am more interested in the data I can pull from the computers such as their serial numbers etc.  So to rephrase my question what is the most amount of data I can extract from the active directory of Company XYZ?

Detailed replies and examples are appreciated

Thanks!



Hi,

Are you developing any inventory application.. ?

Information can be extracted based on attributes. Please find the below link for all AD attributes.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms675090(v=vs.85).aspx

If you want to pull data related to computers, you should use SCCM for this and use hardware inventory which will pull all types of data from your computers

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/gg699374.aspx

The only data you can pull from active directory will be attributes on computer / user objects

Hello,

what is the most amount of data I can extract from the active directory of Company XYZ

For computers or Servers you can extract following information.

computer configuration /Disk capacity / Operating System Information with service pack / hardware make & Model etc...

You can also extract Software inventory with version information on each machine installed with. there are few more you can refer to Link provided by Devaraj G for Active directory attributes.

Hi Kiwi,

Thanks for your post.

You could extract the attributes of objects such as users, contacts, groups, servers, printers, and shared folders.

Active Directory uses objects to store information. Objects are data structures that consist of multiple attributes that store both data and its related metadata. For example, an object that stores a user account has many attributes, including attributes that contain the users logon name, first name, last name, and password. Each of those attributes has additional attributes that contain metadata about the information that the attribute stores.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784826(v=ws.10).aspx

Best Regards,

Mary Dong