What to Do Every Month

There are some additional tasks that should be performed monthly to ensure a stable Active Directory.

Active Directory Database Integrity Check

To make sure that potential problems don't get away from you it is useful to regularly check the integrity of the Active Directory database. This is performed via the NTDSUTIL application.

Maintenance Tasks

Some maintenance tasks, such as an integrity check or defragmentation of the Active Directory database, require that the server be rebooted into Directory Services Recovery mode. This means that the domain controller will not be available. Ensure that you are aware of this during your maintenance windows and that other domain controllers are available to service logon requests . Pay special attention when holders of the FSMO roles are receiving maintenance. Don't plan on Forest prepping your domain at the same time you are going to defragment the NTDS.DIT on the Schema Master.

Performing a Scandisk

Disk integrity is probably the single greatest cause of server failure. Files can become corrupted, disk sectors can go bad, or any number of things can cause disk integrity problems. By regularly running Scandisk, you can identify and usually repair file corruptions. Similarly, Scandisk can detect bad sectors on the physical disk and mark them as unusable. This reduces the chances of system failures due to corrupted drivers or system files. Scandisk has improved significantly over the years and is now several times faster than it was in the Windows NT 4.0 days.

Database Integrity Check

To run the integrity check on the database, simply boot the server into directory services restore mode and run the NTDSUTIL command from a command prompt. Type files and then type integrity . After the completion of the test, simply type quit . This will alert you to any corruption in the Active Directory database. Interesting to note is that this function actually calls a separate program called esentutl.exe. It is not recommended that the esentutl.exe application be run on its own. Instead let the integrity check called within NTDSUTIL do it for you.

BEST PRACTICE: Schedule the Scandisk

Due to disk locking, Scandisk will not be able to scan the system disk from within the operating system. You will need to tell it to schedule the Scandisk for the next reboot. Pay careful attention to messages that come up during the Scandisk process.

Reboot the System

All server administrators love to brag about how long their systems have been up and running. After years of abuse from Unix administrators, Windows 2003 administrators can finally feel good about the stability of their platform. This fact not withstanding, it is still a good practice to reboot the system monthly. This allows system resources to be recaptured, it ensures that logs are committed to disk and gives you an opportunity to make any hardware changes that might have been inspired by your daily system monitoring.

Defragment the System

Defragmenting the system and data disk can result in significant improvements in overall performance. By ensuring that data is read sequentially instead of randomly across the disk you are able to take full advantage of the throughput of your drive subsystem. This also results in significant improvements in backup performance.

Defragmenting the Disk

Defragmenting the disk is one of those tasks that you can accomplish more quickly the more often you run them. Don't be surprised if the first time you run Defragment it takes a fair amount of time. If you run it monthly it will become a fairly quick process.

Be aware that running the defragmentation will noticeably affect disk performance during the time that it is being run. The defragmentation process is very disk- intensive . Make sure you don't run this while users are accessing the system heavily.

Check WINS for Corruptions

Most environments have not yet reached the point of finally eliminating WINS from their environment. Legacy operating systems like Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 9x still require WINS for finding remote resources quickly. WINS, unfortunately , has a tendency to become corrupted. Once a month, open the WINS manager and display all records (all owners ). Sort this alphabetically . Entries that begin with unreadable entries can safely be removed. This will help to reduce WINS- related issues with inability to find resources on the network.

Consistency checking is network- and resource-intensive for the WINS server computer. For this reason, run WINS consistency checks during times of low traffic, such as at night, on weekends, or during planned maintenance windows.