Active Directory has a lot more intelligence built into it compared to Windows NT 4.0 with regard to replication control and site awareness. Here we take a look at the physical network design and how Active Directory may be configured to accommodate the networking conditions available through our network infrastructure. First, we should ensure that when the term replication comes up, the concept is completely understood. For a complete understanding of the terms and concepts in replication, refer to Chapter 2, where the basic topologies and terminologies were spelled out in more detail.

Active Directory replication involves the process in which changes are distributed and tracked between domain controllers. The actual data that is replicated is broken into partitions. When all partitions are replicated to another domain controller, the process creates a full replica. Not only does the full replica contain all attributes of all directory partition objects, it is also both readable and writeable. Three full, writeable directory partition replicas exist on every domain controller as follows:

• Schema partition Contains all class and attribute definitions for the forest. There is one schema directory partition per forest.

• Configuration partition Contains replication configuration information and other information common across the forest. There is one configuration directory partition per forest.

• Domain partition Contains all objects that are stored within a given domain. There is one domain directory partition for each domain in the forest.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what is being...