What is ADSI?

ADSI stands for “Active Directory Service Interfaces” Editor which lets you edit & manage Active Directory Objects and it’s attributes, while working for ADDS.

Quoting from TechNet “ADSI Edit (adsiedit.msc) provides a view of every object and attribute in an Active Directory forest. You can use ADSI Edit to query, view, and edit attributes that are not exposed through other AD DS Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins: Active Directory Users and Computers, Active Directory Sites and Services, Active Directory Domains and Trusts, and Active Directory Schema.”
 

ADSI is an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) which let’s you edit AD Objects and it’s attributes as mentioned earlier. There is another editor Microsoft provides is the “ldp” editor.

More on ldp: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=143517

ADSI edit comes as an MMC snap-in. In most recent operating systems ADSI comes as a standard tool for maintaining AD objects. This service automatically loads in with the current user statistics and loads the current domain in it’s pane. The following snapshot is the GUI for the ADSIeditor.

 

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***Picture Taken from TechNet

More on ADSI Edit: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731547.aspx