Active Directory Database

The size of the active directory database on a domain controller is the size of the NTDS.dit file. This size may vary between domain controllers in the same domain, due to non-replicated changes, differences with non-replicated data, and white-space from purge objects.

In this post, I want to show you how you can use ntdsutil.exe to create snapshots of the Active Directory database and how you can use tools to examine its contents, either to compare or transfer objects without starting in Restore Mode Directory Services (DSRM)

In this mini-post, I want to show you how to perform an offline defragmentation of the Active Directory database. To perform the maintenance of the AD DS database offline, we will use the NtdsUtil.