Chapter 21: Reactivating Active Directory

Overview

Active Directory is a vital part of Windows Server 2003. As described in Chapters 11 and 12, Active Directory contains and controls all the important objects in a network. Which important objects might those be? Well, they include user accounts, shared resources, computer membership, and group policy controls. In other words, Active Directory contains the items that enable and support a Windows 2003 domain.

When Microsoft designed Active Directory, it rightly perceived that any problems with this core service would cause network-wide problems. Therefore, it built powerful fault tolerance into the Active Directory service and provided several mechanisms that help Windows 2003 perform and maintain its regular functions. In this chapter, we look into these recovery and restoration features of Windows 2003 Active Directory.

REMEMBER 

A fault-tolerant system is one that can keep running during a software or hardware error. In addition, fault tolerance should prevent the loss of data.