The Active Directory Architecture

As mentioned previously, Active Directory isn’t, strictly speaking, an X.500 directory service, although like all existing directory services, it’s derived from that standard. The sections that follow enumerate some of the characteristics of the Active Directory architecture.

The Directory System Agent

The DSA is the process that provides access to the physical store of directory information located on a hard disk. The DSA is part of the Local System Authority (LSA) subsystem in Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000. Clients access the directory information using one of the following mechanisms:

  • LDAP clients connect to the DSA using LDAP. Active Directory supports LDAP v3, defined by RFC 2251; and LDAP v2, defined ...

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