Active Directory Maintenance And Data Recovery

1. Chapter 9 Active Directory Maintenance And Data Recovery

2. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 2 Objectives Describe the file structure used by Active Directory Describe how data is written to the Active Directory database Defragment the Active Directory database Move the Active Directory database to a different location on disk

3. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 3 Objectives (continued) Back up Active Directory Recover the Active Directory database and restore it, if necessary, from a backup Manage which domain controllers (DCs) hold the operations master roles

4. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 4 Active Directory File Structure Active Directory uses a transactional database based on the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) A transaction is an addition, modification, or deletion Database changes are recorded in log files before being made to the database files A pointer to the last completed transaction is written to a checkpoint file Rollback is the removal of incomplete transactions in the event of a failure

5. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 5 Active Directory File Structure (continued) The database file, NTDS.DIT, consists of The schema table The link table The data table EDB.LOG is the current transaction log file EDB.LOG is rewritten as EDBXXXXX.LOG when full EDB.CHK is the checkpoint file RES1.LOG and RES2.LOG are reserve log files TEMP.EDB is a temporary storage space

6. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 6 Active Directory Files

7. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 7 How Data Is Written to Active Directory The data to be modified is loaded into RAM The transaction is recorded in EDB.LOG The transaction is then written to NTDS.DIT The EDB.CHK file is updated with a new pointer An object marked for deletion and moved into the Deleted Objects folder creates a tombstone Backups older than the tombstone lifetime cannot be restored

8. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 8 Defragmenting the Database Fragmentation means that related information is spread out in little chunks Online defragmentation (garbage collection) purges deleted objects whose tombstone lifetimes have expired without compacting the database Offline defragmentation is performed to compact the database

9. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 9 Compacting the Active Directory Database

10. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 10 Moving the Active Directory Database Problems can occur if the partition storing Active Directory runs out of space The location of Active Directory can be selected during installation using dcpromo To move the database file Restart the DC in Directory Services Restore Mode Run Ntdsutil Use the files command

11. Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory 11 Backing Up Active Directory Active Directory is backed up as part of the system state