Active Directory Interview Questions and Answers
Question - 51 : - Different modes of AD restore ?
Answer - 51 : - A nonauthoritative restore is the default method for restoring Active Directory. To perform a nonauthoritative restore, you must be able to start the domain controller in Directory Services Restore Mode. After you restore the domain controller from backup, replication partners use the standard replication protocols to update Active Directory and associated information on the restored domain controller.
An authoritative restore brings a domain or a container back to the state it was in at the time of backup and overwrites all changes made since the backup. If you do not want to replicate the changes that have been made subsequent to the last backup operation, you must perform an authoritative restore. In this one needs to stop the inbound replication first before performing the An authoritative restore.
Question - 52 : - How do you configure a stand-by operation master for any of the roles?
Answer - 52 : - # Open Active Directory Sites and Services.
# Expand the site name in which the standby operations master is located to display the Servers folder.
# Expand the Servers folder to see a list of the servers in that site.
# Expand the name of the server that you want to be the standby operations master to display its NTDS Settings.
# Right-click NTDS Settings, click New, and then click Connection.
# In the Find Domain Controllers dialog box, select the name of the current role holder, and then click OK.
# In the New Object-Connection dialog box, enter an appropriate name for the Connection object or accept the default name, and click OK.
Question - 53 : - What's the difference between transferring a FSMO role and seizing ?
Answer - 53 : - Seizing an FSMO can be a destructive process and should only be attempted if the existing server with the FSMO is no longer available.
If you perform a seizure of the FSMO roles from a DC, you need to ensure two things:
the current holder is actually dead and offline, and that the old DC will NEVER return to the network. If you do an FSMO role Seize and then bring the previous holder back online, you'll have a problem.
An FSMO role TRANSFER is the graceful movement of the roles from a live, working DC to another live DC During the process, the current DC holding the role(s) is updated, so it becomes aware it is no longer the role holder
Question - 54 : - I want to look at the RID allocation table for a DC. What do I do?
Answer - 54 : - dcdiag /test:ridmanager /s:servername /v (servername is the name of our DC)
Question - 55 : - What is BridgeHead Server in AD ?
Answer - 55 : - A bridgehead server is a domain controller in each site, which is used as a contact point to receive and replicate data between sites. For intersite replication, KCC designates one of the domain controllers as a bridgehead server. In case the server is down, KCC designates another one from the domain controller. When a bridgehead server receives replication updates from another site, it replicates the data to the other domain controllers within its site.
Question - 56 : - What is the default size of ntds.dit ?
Answer - 56 : - 10 MB in Server 2000 and 12 MB in Server 2003 .
Question - 57 : - Where is the AD database held and What are other folders related to AD ?
Answer - 57 : - AD Database is saved in %systemroot%/ntds. You can see other files also in this folder. These are the main files controlling the AD structure.
ntds.dit
edb.log
res1.log
res2.log
edb.chk
When a change is made to the Win2K database, triggering a write operation, Win2K records the transaction in the log file (edb.log). Once written to the log file, the change is then written to the AD database. System performance determines how fast the system writes the data to the AD database from the log file. Any time the system is shut down, all transactions are saved to the database.
During the installation of AD, Windows creates two files: res1.log and res2.log. The initial size of each is 10MB. These files are used to ensure that changes can be written to disk should the system run out of free disk space. The checkpoint file (edb.chk) records transactions committed to the AD database (ntds.dit). During shutdown, a "shutdown" statement is written to the edb.chk file.
Then, during a reboot, AD determines that all transactions in the edb.log file have been committed to the AD database. If, for some reason, the edb.chk file doesn't exist on reboot or the shutdown statement isn't present, AD will use the edb.log file to update the AD database. The last file in our list of files to know is the AD database itself, ntds.dit. By default, the file is located in\NTDS, along with the other files we've discussed
Question - 58 : - What FSMO placement considerations do you know of ?
Answer - 58 : - Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory domains utilize a Single Operation Master method called FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operation), as described in Understanding FSMO Roles in Active Directory.
In most cases an administrator can keep the FSMO role holders (all 5 of them) in the same spot (or actually, on the same DC) as has been configured by the Active Directory installation process.
However, there are scenarios where an administrator would want to move one or more of the FSMO roles from the default holder DC to a different DC.
Windows Server 2003 Active Directory is a bit different than the Windows 2000 version when dealing with FSMO placement.
In this article I will only deal with Windows Server 2003 Active Directory, but you should bear in mind that most considerations are also true when planning Windows 2000 AD FSMO roles
Question - 59 : - What is OU ?
Answer - 59 : - Organization Unit is a container object in which you can keep objects such as user accounts, groups, computer, printer . applications and other (OU).
In organization unit you can assign specific permission to the user's. organization unit can also be used to create departmental limitation.
Question - 60 : - Name some OU design considerations ?
Answer - 60 : - OU design requires balancing requirements for delegating administrative rights - independent of Group Policy needs - and the need to scope the application of Group Policy.