Active Directory® for Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Technical Reference

Active Directory Database Maintenance

One of the important components of managing Active Directory is maintaining the Active Directory database. Under normal circumstances, you will rarely manage the Active Directory database directly because regular automatic database management will maintain the health of your database in all but exceptional situations. These automatic processes include an online defragmentation of the Active Directory database as well as a garbage collection process to clean up deleted items. For those rare occasions when you do need to directly manage the Active Directory database, Windows Server 2003 includes the Ntdsutil tool.

Garbage Collection

One of the automatic processes used to maintain the Active Directory database ...