Configuring and Designing Replication in Active Directory

Abstract

Active Directory is widely used across the various organizations for Windowstextregistered infrastructure authentication. Organizations may vary from very small having only one office to very large spread across the globe with various offices. Domain controllers are the heart of Active Directory and store its database. For Active Directory to function properly, its database should be consistent across all the domain controllers which is achieved using replication, hence Replication is integral part of Active Directory. For very small organizations or organizations that are well connected using high bandwidth network links, replication doesn’t create any major problem and happens smoothly without much of the configuration needed. But for the organizations which are very large and have a large number of small offices spread across the globe with limited connectivity, configuring replication is a very important and tough task. If the replication is not properly configured in such organizations, whole deployment of Active Directory may fail. Configuring replication involves mapping the Active Directory to the physical network of the organization which is achieved by configuring sites, subnets, site links and site link bridgeheads. This paper discusses the concept and need of replication in Active Directory and configuration and design of its replication for large organizations. This paper also discusses the best practices to configure replication among large organizations and illustrate it by demonstrating it for a dummy organization.

Keywords

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