Hey guys, We wanted to know if there are optimal settings for the Active Directory for Server 2003 R2 to make sure it runs as well as possible. If there are any optimal settings or suggestions please let me know. Thanks

Hello, my suggestions are: Make sure that you are using at least two DC/DNS/GC servers For Best Practices of assigning FSMO roles, refer to this article:http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/06/15/fsmo.html Make sure that each DC/DNS points to itself as primary DNS server and to another one as secondary one Make sure that each DC without DNS points to the correct internal DNS server as primary one Make sure that your client computers are pointing to an internal DNS server as primary one to avoid slow logons It will be better that the DC with highest OS holds FSMO roles. .... There is other things which depends of your need and your environment. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights. Microsoft Student Partner Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Security Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Security Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration

Not much in AD itself, usually its the hardware, CPU, RAM, Network, etc that effects performance. Unless you have those there is not much that can really increase AD performance beyond a good hardware configuration. Also, to add login capacity you usually just add a second DC.

Hello, for hardware see the following: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738079(WS.10).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms978394.aspx#bdadotnetarch081_topic2b For design start here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754678(WS.10).aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725625(WS.10).aspx http://support.microsoft.com/gp/gp_namespace_master#tab0 And as it relies on function DNS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb629410.aspxBest regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Hey guys, We wanted to know if there are optimal settings for the Active Directory for Server 2003 R2 to make sure it runs as well as possible. If there are any optimal settings or suggestions please let me know. Thanks First, run a baseline on your server, know where its at so you can detect abnormal behavior in the future. Get an estimated processor, disk, and memory utilization. Aside of general hardware... Make sure DNS is setup properly. DNS can cause a lot of performance issues if its not setup properly. Aside of that... You can also use perfmon.msc to add counters and monitor directory services to see what kind of performance you are getting. Use perfmon in tandem with the AD Performance Testing Tool. There's way too many tools to list off... how many users are there? If you have less than 1000 users, don't worry too much about Active Directory performing badly. It does pretty well out of the box, I believe it can support upto at least 30000 before seeing any severe performance degradation. Active directory itself is only performing authentications for Computers and users... The idea is to have additional DCs to stand-by for critical FSMO roles that can impact daily operations if the DC becomes unavailable. Here's a decent list of some good resources to help you out. Performance Tuning Guidelines for Server 2003 http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/8/0/2800a518-7ac6-4aac-bd85-74d2c52e1ec6/tuning.doc Active Directory Performance Testing Tool http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4814fe3f-92ce-4871-b8a4-99f98b3f4338&displaylang=en Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc184924 Optimizing Directory Service Performance http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720220(WS.10).aspx Hope this helps! Best Regards, Steve Kline Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Server Administrator Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Active Directory, Network Infrastructure, Application Platform, Windows 7 Microsoft Certified Product Specialist & Network Product Specialist Red Hat Certified System Administrator This posting is "as is" without warranties and confers no rights.