local LDAP server for development on windows 7

Question

Our (ASP.Net) application has to talk to an LDAP/Active Directory server for verifying user groups. Now several members of our team need to be able to work disconnected.

Is there a way to set up a local LDAP server on the development machine (Windows 7 Pro)?

Answer 1

Apache has recently released a new version of ApacheDS, their LDAPv3 compliant server.

http://directory.apache.org/apacheds/

Answer 2

ADAM is now called Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services, and was just published in a Windows 7 version, too - download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a45059af-47a8-4c96-afe3-93dab7b5b658

AD LDS is the best solution for local LDAP development - it allows you to start and stop your AD instances at will (it runs as a Windows service), and you can even have multiple copies running.

Check out more about AD LDS in Technet or MSDN library

Answer 3

For those who are using Windows-8, the Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD - LDS) is part of windows feature and we need to turn that feature on.

Following is the link to do so. (look into "To install AD LDS on Windows 8" section)

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6a3bedf7-9c5b-4ada-9a51-6b794adc9ab8

Following is the link how we can create instance of AD-LDS.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc816778(v=ws.10).aspx

For creating users and groups and other operation use below link:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa772138(v=vs.85).aspx

And finally to integrate the AD - LDS with MVC below link shall be helpful

authentificate asp.net mvc 5 application from adlds instance

Answer 4

You can also try the OpenLDAP for Windows:

OpenLDAP is a free suite of client and server tools that implement the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for Linux. We created OpenLDAP for Windows, a package that you can also use for free. It works out of the box so no additional software is needed.

The package is based on OpenLDAP 2.4.39 and includes most of the features available on Linux. The default backend is Berkeley DB with SSL support. OpenLDAP for Windows features complete Unicode support. The package has been tested on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.x.

OpenLDAP for Windows is free for private and commercial use.

Easy to follow installation instructions can be found here: OpenLDAP for Windows - Installation

Also, you can use Ldap Admin client, it can connect to both OpenLDAP for Windows and ApacheDS.