Mastering Active Directory

Active Directory database maintenance

Active Directory maintains a multi-master database to store schema information, configuration information, and domain information. Normally, when we say database, first thing which comes to our mind is a software like Microsoft SQL, MySQL, or Oracle. But here it's quite different. Active Directory database uses the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), which is an indexed and sequential access method (ISAM) technology.

Here, a single system works as the client and server. It uses record-oriented database architecture, which provides extremely fast access to records. ESE indexes the data in the database file. This database file can grow up to 16 terabytes and hold over 2 billion records. Typically ESE is used ...