4.1 Introduction

One of the major benefits of migrating to Windows 2000 is the ability to consolidate servers. Consolidation is about reducing the number of domains and reducing the number of servers and DCs. The trend in Windows 2000 designs is fewer but larger servers. The rationale behind consolidating servers is to reduce the hardware costs as well as management and troubleshooting costs. In other words, the goal is to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Understanding the Active Directory database is an essential part of the Windows 2000 design and particularly its consolidation efforts. The whole process of consolidation involves sizing DCs and GCs for large organizations with the goal of centralizing servers as much as possible. During this process, particular attention is paid to the choice of hardware and storage for these servers. The trend in scalable designs is to separate the server sizing and the storage design. This greatly simplifies the approach. In the server design, the CPU and memory considerations are addressed. In the storage design, the I/O subsystem and I/O performance are addressed.

This chapter reviews the Active Directory database architecture, explains the I/O patterns of the Active Directory, and discusses how the database works. We will then put into practice lessons learned in terms of optimization and storage design and go through the steps of creating, populating, and searching a very large Active Directory domain. We will review the tests and steps we perform when we create an Active Directory domain containing more than...