Microsoft Active Directory Questions - Essay

Microsoft Active Directory Questions. ● What is Active Directory? Active Directory is Microsoft's trademarked directory service, an integral part of the Windows 2000 architecture. Like other directory services, such as Novell Directory Services (NDS), Active Directory is a centralized and standardized system that automates network management of user data, security, and distributed resources, and enables interoperation with other directories. Active Directory is designed especially for distributed networking environments. ● What is LDAP? Short for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, a set of protocols for accessing information directories. LDAP is based on the standards contained within the X.500 standard, but is significantly simpler. And unlike X.500, LDAP supports TCP/IP, which is necessary for any type of Internet access. Because it's a simpler version of X.500, LDAP is sometimes called X.500-lite. ● Can you connect Active Directory to other 3rd-party Directory Services? Name a few options? Yes. Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) is used to connect Active Directory to other 3rd-party Directory Services (including directories used by SAP, Domino, etc). ● Where is the AD database held? What other folders are related to AD? AD Database is saved in %systemroot%/ntds. You can see other files also in this folder. These are the main files controlling the AD structure ● ntds.dit ● edb.log ● res1.log ● res2.log ● edb.chk When a change is made to the Win2K database, triggering a write operation, Win2K records the transaction in the log file (edb.log). Once written to the log file, the change is then written to the AD database. System performance determines how fast the system writes the data to the AD database from the log file. Any time the system is shut down, all transactions are saved to the database. During the installation of AD, Windows creates two files: res1.log and res2.log. The