TABLE OF CONTENTS In earlier chapters, we looked at the Active Directory (AD) infrastructure, as well as various interacting elements, such as forest, sites, domains, and trusts. We also examined the Global Catalog, Schema, and Group Policy in order to fully understand AD in a Windows Server 2003 environment. Now that we've thoroughly reviewed this information, we can discuss how to ensure AD availability.
This chapter deals with how to maintain high availability of your Active Directory services. You'll learn about the Active Directory database, and the importance of system state data to Active Directory availability. We'll discuss fault tolerance plans as well as Active Directory performance issues. You'll find out how to perform necessary maintenance tasks, such as defragging the database, and you'll learn how to monitor or move the database.
Next, we'll address backup and restoration of the Active Directory, and show you the different restoration methods that you can use and when each is appropriate. We'll walk you through the steps of performing both an authoritative and a normal restore. Finally, you'll learn how to troubleshoot Active Directory availability problems.
In this section, we look at the core components of the Windows Server 2003 Active Directory service. First, we discuss the structure and type of database, including its files and related components. You'll also learn how updates are written to the Active Directory database, and how it recovers in the event of a failure during the update process. We will review the key system...
