Active Directory Cookbook

3.17. Enabling and Disabling the Global Catalog

Problem

You want to enable or disable the global catalog on a particular server.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Open the Active Directory Sites and Services snap-in.

2. Browse to the nTDSDSA object (NTDS Settings) underneath the server object for the domain controller you want to enable or disable the global catalog for.

3. Right-click on NTDS Settings and select Properties.

4. Under the General tab, check (to enable) or uncheck (to disable) the box beside Global Catalog.

5. Click OK.

Using a command-line interface

In the following command, <ServerObjectDN> should be the server object DN, not the DN of the nTDSDSA object.

> dsmod server "<ServerObjectDN>" -isgc yes|no

For example, the following command will enable the global catalog on dc1 in the Raleigh site:

> dsmod server[RETURN] 
"cn=DC1,cn=servers,cn=Raleigh,cn=sites,cn=configuration,dc=rallencorp,dc=com" -isgc[RETURN]
yes

Using VBScript

' This code enables or disables the GC for the specified DC
' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------
strDC = "<DomainControllerName>"   ' e.g. dc01.rallencorp.com
strGCEnable = 1                    ' 1 = enable, 0 = disable
' ------ END CONFIGURATION ---------

set objRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://" & strDC & "/RootDSE")
objNTDS = GetObject("LDAP://" & strDC & "/" &  _
                    objRootDSE.Get("dSServiceName"))
objNTDS.Put "options", strGCEnable
objNTDS.SetInfo

Discussion

The first domain controller promoted into a forest is by default also made a global catalog server. If you want additional servers ...