Contact

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe via RSS/JSON

Categories

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
© Rakhesh Sasidharan

Elsewhere

[Aside] Domain Controller locator

Posted: August 25th, 2017 | Tags: , , , | Category: Windows | §

A while ago I was reading up on the Domain Controller process to confirm some stuff before changes I was making at work. Found a couple of good links, still got them open in my browser but before closing them out I thought I should paste them here as a reference to myself. I know most of the info, but occasionally you forget what you know or need a quick confirmation.

Delays with Send As permissions, Quotas, Mailbox permissions in Exchange

Posted: March 5th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Category: Exchange | §

Send As permissions prompted this post so I’ll stick to that. But what I describe below also affects mailbox permissions, quotas, and other Exchange information stored in AD. 

Assigning someone Send As permissions in Exchange is easy. Use the EMC, or if you love PowerShell do something like this:

However, there is a catch in that the permission isn’t always granted immediately. It could be instant, but it could also take up to 2 hours.

This is because when we make a change to a user object – even of a mail related attribute such as Send As – the change isn’t immediately read by Exchange. The change is in fact made in Active Directory (notice the cmdlet above) and Exchange has to query AD to get the changed value. If Exchange were to query AD each time it needs to do something with a mail enabled user object, that would be poor performance for both Exchange and Domain Controllers. Instead, Exchange servers have a component called Directory Service Access (DSAccess) (renamed to Active Directory Access (ADAccess) since Exchange 2007) that periodically queries AD and caches the results for a period of time. When you grant someone Send As permissions as above, if Exchange’s cache isn’t updated with the latest value it will reject users trying to send email on behalf of the other user until such time the cache is updated. 

This cache is commonly referred to as Mail Box Information (MBI) Cache. 

The items in the MBI Cache are controlled by something called the Mailbox Cache Age Limit. There is a registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem which has two values:

  • Mailbox Cache Age Limit – a value of type DWORD (decimal) that controls the age of the items in the cache.
    • The higher the age limit, the longer the item can stay in cache (and so won’t be refreshed). 
    • The default for this is 120 minutes (i.e. 2 hours). This is the default even if the value does not exist.
    • So this means any item present in the cache is not updated with new information for up to 2 hours – even if DSAccess/ ADAccess queries AD in between. 
  • Reread Logon Quotas Interval – a value of type DWORD (decimal) that controls how often the Exchange information store reads the mailbox quota information from the cache.
    • This is not relevant for the current topic but I thought to mention as it is present in the same place, and quotas are another area which commonly affect the user / administrator expectation. 
    • The default for this 7200 seconds (i.e. 2 hours). This is the default even if the value does not exist. 
    • The recommended value is 1200 seconds (i.e. 20 mins)?
    • Note that this controls how often information is read from the cache. You could read from the cache every 20 mins, but if you only update the cache every 2 hours (the default for the previous registry value) you will still get stale information! So any changes to this registry value must be done in conjunction with the previous registry value. 

To get changes made to mail objects in AD propagate faster to Exchange one must change the two values above (or at least the first one if you don’t care about quotas). 

Bear in mind though, that the above values only control how often the cache items expire or are referred to. They do not control how often DSAccess/ ADAccess queries AD for new information. This is controlled by a value at another registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange ADAccess\Instance0:

  • CacheTTLUser – a value of type DWORD (decimal) that controls how often DSAccess/ ADAccess queries a DC for new information. 
    • The default for this is 300 seconds (i.e. 5 mins). This is the default even if the value does not exist. 
    • Lowering this value is not recommended as it will affect Exchange performance. 

Once any of these values are changed the Information Store service (or the Exchange server itself) must be restarted. 

In addition to the registry values I mention above, there’s one more worth mentioning. It isn’t too important because it’s value can never exceed that of the Mailbox Cache Age Limit, but it’s worth knowing about. In the same registry key as Mailbox Cache Age Limit – i.e. at HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem – is present another value: 

  • Mailbox Cache Idle Limit – a value of type DWORD (decimal) that controls how long an item can be idle in the cache before it is removed from the cache.  
    • The default for this is 900 seconds (i.e. 15 mins). This is the default even if the value does not exist. 
    • The maximum for this value can be up to the value of Mailbox Cache Age Limit (for obvious reasons – that’s when the item is removed anyway!).
    • This is an interesting setting. It seems to be there to introduce some randomness in how cache items are refreshed, and also to stir up the cache a bit?
      • Without it all items in the cache will expire at the same time (every 2 hours by default) and will need to be refreshed together. But with this setting some items will be periodically discarded (every 15 mins by default) if they were not accessed by the Exchange server during that interval and a fresh copy cached the next time DSAccess/ ADAccess contacts a DC. 
      • This way any object that wasn’t accessed recently will have an up-to-date copy in the cache, but objects that were accessed recently continue to be cached (and potentially have stale information). 
      • So at any given point of time the cache will have items of varying expiry time (i.e. not all will expire together in 2 hours). And the first time an item is accessed in a long time, it will possibly have the latest information. 

With this in mind one can appreciate why updates to a mail enabled object may not immediately take effect. There’s so many factors! It will depend on whether the object has past its idle time. If not, it will depend on whether the object has past its cache age. Further, if it’s a quota setting, it will also depend on the quota reread interval. Also, how often ADAccess/ DSAccess contacts a DC matters. And on top of all this, AD replication too plays a role because the change has to replicate from the DC you made it on to the DC that ADAccess/ DSAccess recently contacted to cache information.

You could be lucky in that the object you changed has just past its idle time and so ADAccess/ DSAccess will get an up-to-date copy soon. You could be lucky in that even though the object hasn’t past its idle time it’s about to expire in a few minutes and so will be refreshed. Or you could be unlucky and make a change just after the object was refreshed, and it’s not idle any time soon, so you’ll have to wait a whole 2 hours (by default) before your change takes effect! 

As Yoda would say, patience you must with Exchange and permissions. :)

p.s. While writing this post I learnt that Update Rollup 4 for Exchange 2010 SP 2 introduces the ability to automatically copy emails you send on behalf of someone to that person’s Sent Items folder too. Good to know! That’s a useful feature. 

Replicate with repadmin

Posted: February 10th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Infrastructure, Windows | §

The following command replicates the specified partition from the source DC to the destination DC. You can use this command to force a replication. Note that these three arguments are mandatory. 

An optional switch /full will HWMV and UTDV tables to be reset, replicating all changes from the source DC to the destination DC.

The following command synchronizes the specified DC with all its replication partners. You can specify a partition to replicate; if nothing is specified, the Configuration partition is used by default. 

Instead of specifying a partition the /A switch can be used to sync all partitions held by the DC. By default only partner DCs in the same site are replicated with, but the /e switch will cause replication to happen with all partners across all sites. Also, changes can be pushed from the DC to others rather than pulled (the default) using the /P switch. 

SRV records and AD

Posted: January 30th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Infrastructure, Windows | §

Example of an SRV record:

Format is:

Where:

  • class is always IN
  • TTL is in seconds 
  • service is the name of the service (example: LDAP, GC, DC, Kerberos). It is preceded by an underscore (prevents collisions with any existing names). 
  • protocol is the protocol over which the service is offered (example: TCP, UDP). It is preceded by an underscore (prevents collisions with any existing names). 
  • domain is the DNS name of the domain for which the service is offered. 
  • host is the machine that will provide this service. 
  • SRV is the text SRV. Indicates that this is an SRV record. 
  • priority is the priority of the host. Similar to SMTP MX record priorities. Host with lower number has higher preference (similar to SMTP records). 
  • weight allows for load balancing between hosts of the same priority. Host with higher number has higher preference (intuitive: higher weight wins).

Similar to MX records, the host of an SRV record must be a name with an A or AAAA record. It cannot point to a CNAME record. 

A machine starting up in a domain can easily query for DCs of that domain via DNS. DCs provide the LDAP service, so a query for _ldap._tcp.dnsdomain will return a list of DCs the machine can use. 

On DCs, the netlogon service registers many records relevant to the services offered by the DC. The A records of the DC are registered by the DNS client service (for Server 2008 and above) but the other records are taken care of by the netlogon service. A copy of the registered records is also stored in the %systemroot%\system32\config\netlogon.dns file in case it needs to be imported manually or compared for troubleshooting. Note that each DC only adds the records for itself. That is, WIN-DC01 for instance, will add a record like this:

It will not add records for WIN-DC02 and others as it does not know of them. The records added by each DC will be combined together in the DNS database as it replicates and gets records from all the DCs, so when a client queries for the above record, for instance, it will get records added by all DCs. 

AD creates a sub-domain called _msdcs.domainname to hold items pertaining to AD for that domain. (MSDCS = Microsoft Domain Controller Services) This sub-domain is created for each domain (including child-domains) of the forest. The _msdcs sub-domain belonging to the forest root domain is special in that it is a separate zone that is replicated to all DNS servers in the forest. The other _msdcs sub-domains are part of the parent zone itself. For instance below are the _msdcs sub-domains for a forest root domain (rakhesh.local) and the _msdcs sub-domain for a child domain (anoushka.rakhesh.local). Notice how the former is a separate zone with a delegation to it, while the latter is a part of the parent zone. 

For forest-root domain

For forest-root domain

For child-domain

For child-domain

Under the _msdcs sub-domain a convention such as the following is used:

Here DcType is one of dc (domain controller), gc (global catalog), pdc (primary domain controller), or domains (GUIDs of the domains).

The various SRV records registered by netlogon can be found at this link. Note that SRV records are created under both the domain/ child-domain and the forest root domain (the table in the link marks these accordingly). Below are some of the entries added by netlogon for DCs – WIN-DC04 and WIN-DC05 – in a site called KOTTAYAM for my domain anoushka.rakhesh.local. Of these WIN-DC05 is also a GC. 

Advertise that the DCs offer the LDAP service over TCP protocol for the anoushka.rakhesh.local domain:

Advertise that the DCs offer the LDAP service over TCP protocol for the anoushka.rakhesh.local domain for both sites of the forest (even though the DCs themselves are only in a single site – this way clients in any site can get these DC names when querying DNS SRV records):

WIN-DC05 has a few additional records compared to WIN-DC04 because it is a GC. 

Notice all of them are specific to its site and are created in the forest root domain zone/ _msdcs sub-domain of the forest root domain. This is because GCs are used forest-wide also. In contrast, similar records advertising the DC service are created for both sites and in the _msdcs sub-domain of the child zone:

To re-register SRV records, either restart the netlogon service of a DC or use nltest as below:

 

Useful ldp queries

Posted: January 30th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Infrastructure, Windows | §

Just dumping useful ldp.exe queries as I come across/ think of them. Better to keep them here in one consolidated post for future reference …

Find all GCs in the forest

If a DC is a GC, its NTDS Setting object has an attribute called options whose value is 0x1. Not sure if a DC is a GC and something else, whether the value changes, but for now I’ll assume it doesn’t and so one can quickly search for all GCs in the forest by connecting to the Configuration partition and filtering by the following:

  • Filter: (&(cn=NTDS Settings)(options=1))
  • Base DN: CN=Configuration,DC=domainname
  • Attributes: distinguishedName
  • Scope: Subtree

 

Notes on AD Replication (contd.)

Posted: January 12th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Infrastructure, Windows | §

This post is a continuation to my previous one. 

How the AD Replication Model Works

(source)

Conflict Resolution

Previously I mentioned that conflict resolution in AD does not depend on timestamp. What is used instead of the “volatility” of changes. Here’s how it works in practice. 

Remember the replication metadata stored on each object? The ones you can view using repadmin /showobjmeta. I mentioned 5 metadata there – the Local USN, the Originating DSA, the Originating USN, the Originating Timestamp, and Version. Three of these metadata are used a conflict resolution stamp for every attribute:

  • Version, which as we know is updated each time the attribute is updated
  • Originating Timestamp, which is the timestamp from the DC where the update originated from
  • Originating DSA, which is not the DSA name or GUID as you’d expect from the repadmin output, but the invocationID of the DSA where the update originated from.

How is this stamp used? If there’s a conflict to an attribute – i.e. a change is made to an attribute on two separate DCs – first the Version is considered. Whichever update has the higher Version wins. Notice how the timestamp of the change doesn’t matter. Say WIN-DC01 had a change to an attribute twice (thus incrementing the Version twice) while WIN-DC02 had a change to the same attribute once, but at a later time, and both these changes reached WIN-DC03 together – the change from WIN-DC01 will win over the later change from WIN-DC02 because the number of changes were more there. 

If two conflicting changes have the same Version then the timestamp is considered. This has a one-second resolution, and so unless the conflict changes happened at the exact same second this is usually enough to resolve the conflict. 

However, if both Version and timestamp are unable to resolve the conflict, then the invocationID is considered. This is guaranteed to be different for each DC, and is random, so whichever change is from a DC with higher invocationID wins. 

Replication Metadata

The Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC) (will be discussed in a later post) is the component that is responsible for maintaining the replication topology. It is maintains connection objects with the replication partners and stores this information, for each domain partition, in a multivalued attribute called repsFrom in the root of that domain partition. 

For example, here are the replication partners for WIN-DC02. Although not shown here, WIN-DC04 & WIn-DC05 are of a child domain. 

win-dc02-replications

Now consider the repsFrom attribute of the domain partition on WIN-DC02: 

And here’s the repsFrom from the Configuration partition:

Each entry starts from dwVersion and contains information like the number of failures, time of last successful sync, the DSA GUID, the database GUID, USNs, etc. Since only one DC is replicating with WIN-DC02 for the domain partition there’s only one value for that partition; while there are three DCs replicating for the Configuration partition and so there are three values for that partition. 

Each DC polls the DSAs (DCs) in this attribute for changes (that’s for the scheduled changes, not the ones where the source DC sends and update to all its partners and they poll for changes). If a DC is demoted – i.e. its NTDS settings object is deleted (i.e. the DSA is no longer valid) – the KCC will remove this DSA from the attribute. This prevents replication attempts to demoted DCs. (Prior to Windows 2003 though, and even now if this attribute is assigned a value, there used to be an attribute called replTopologyStayOfExecution. This value had a default of 14 days, and a maximum value of half the tombstone lifetime (the period for which deleted objects are retained). In the presence of this attribute – which existed by default in Window Server 2003 and prior, and can be set if required in later versions – if the KCC detects an invalid DSA, instead of removing it from the repsFrom attribute it will let it remain until such time the duration of the object being deleted exceeds replTopologyStayOfExecution). 

Atomicity

Atomicity is a term encountered in databases and operating systems (I first encountered it during my CS classes, specifically the OS course I think). An atomic operation can be thought of as an indivisible operation – meaning all events that take place during an atomic operation either take place together, or they don’t. (It comes from the idea that an atom was thought to be indivisible). With respect to databases, this is a guarantee that if a bunch of values are written in an atomic operation, either all the values are written or none of them. There’s no confusion that perhaps only a few values got committed while the rest were missed out. Even if one value didn’t get written, all others will not be written. That’s the guarantee! 

In the context of AD, updates are written to the AD database. And all attribute updates to a single object will be written atomically in a single transaction. However:

  • If the attributes are linked attributes (remember the previous post where there are attributes with forward and back links, for e.g. member and memberOf) the updates won’t be atomic – not too surprising, they are for different objects after all, and also usually the back link is generated by the system not sent as an update. 
  • Remember: the maximum number of values that can be written in a single transaction is 5000. 
  • To ensure that (nonlinked) attributes to an object are written atomically, updates to nonlinked attributes are prioritized over updates to linked attributes. This happens when a source DC packages all the updates into replication packets. The DC prioritizes nonlinked attributes over linked attributes. When it comes to writing the updates to the destination DC database though:
    • For linked attributes, because of parent-child relationships the objects might be written out of order to how the updates are received. This is to ensure that objects are created before any links are applied to that object.
    • When an object already exists on the destination DC, even though nonlined attributes are replicated first, they are not guaranteed to be written first to the database. Generally they are applied first, but it’s not guaranteed. (Note to self: I am not very clear about this point). 
  • Remember: the number of values in a replication packet is approximately 100. If there are more than 100 values, again the nonlinked attributes are tried to put in one packet, while the linked attributes can span multiple packets. In such cases, when they are written on the destination DC database, all updates to a single object can require multiple transactions. (They are still guaranteed to be written in the same replication cycle). 
  • Note: Only originating updates must be applied in the same database transaction. Replicated updates can be applied in more than one database transaction.

 

Notes on AD Replication, Updates, Attributes, USN, High-Watermark Vector, Up-to-dateness Vector, Metadata, etc.

Posted: January 11th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Category: Infrastructure, Windows | §

Reading a couple of AD Replication posts from TechNet/ MSDN. Below are my notes on them. 

Note

This is a super long post! It began as notes to the TechNet/ MSDN posts but it quickly grew into more. Lots of additional stuff and examples from my side/ other blog posts. Perhaps I should have split these into separate posts but I didn’t feel like it.

What is the AD Replication Model?

(source)

  • AD makes use of pull replication and not push. That is, each DC pulls in changes from other DCs (as opposed to the DC that has changes pushing these to targets). Reason for pulling instead of pushing is that only the destination DC knows what changes it needs. It is possible it has got some changes from another DC – remember AD is multimaster – so no point pushing all changes to a destination DC.
  • Initial replication to a new DC in the domain is via LDAP. Subsequent replications are via RPC.
  • All DCs do not replicate with all other DCs. They only replicate with a subset of DCs, as determined by the replication topology. (I am not sure, but I think this is only in the case of InterSite replication …). This is known as store and forward replication. DCs store updates they get from replication partners ams forward these to other DCs.
  • There are two sorts of replication – state-based and log-based.
    • State-based means DCs apply updates to their replicas (their copies of the partitions) as and when they arrive.
    • In log-based replication each DC maintains a log of the changes and sends this log to all other DCs. Once a destination DC receives this log it applies it to its replica and becomes up-to-date. This also means the destination DC will receive a list of all changes (from the source DC perspective), not just the changes it wants. 
    • Active Directory (actually called Active Directory Domain Services since Server 2008) uses state-based replication. 
    • Each DC maintains a list of objects by last modification. This way it can easily examine the last few objects in the list to identify how much of the replication source’s changes have already been processed. 

Linked & Multivalued attributes

Before the next post it’s worth going into Linked attributes and Multivalued attributes.

  • Linked attributes are pairs of attributes. AD calculates the value of one of the attributes (called the “back link”) based on the value of the other attribute (called the “forward link”). For example: group membership. Every user object has an attribute called memberOf. You can’t see this by default in ADUC in the “Attribute Editor” tab. But if you click “Filter” and select to show “Backlinks” too then you can view this attribute. backlinks The memberOf attribute is an example of a back link. And it’s generated by AD, which is why it’s a read-only attribute. It’s counterpart, the forward link, is the member attribute of a group object. Linked attributes are linked together in the schema. In the schema definitions of those attributes – which are instances of an attributeSchema class – there is a linkID attribute that defines the back and forward links. The attribute with an even linkID is the forward link (the write-able attribute that we can set) while the attribute with a linkID that’s one more than the linkID of the forward link is the back link (the read-only, AD generated attribute). For instance, using ADSI Edit I found the CN=Member,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=mydomain object in the Schema partition. This is the schema definition of the member attribute. Being a forward link it has an even linkID. linkid Its counterpart can be easily found using ldp.exe. Search the Schema partition for all objects with linkID of 3. linkid-2 The result is CN=Is-Member-Of-DL,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=mydomain, which is the attributeSchema object defining the memberOf attribute (notice the lDAPDisplayName attribute of this object in the above screenshot).
    • It’s worth taking a moment to understand the above example. When one uses ADUC to change a user/ group’s group membership, all one does is go to the user/ group object, the “Member Of” tab, and add a group. This gives the impression that the actual action happens in the user/ group object. But as we see above that’s not the case. Although ADUC may give such an impression, when we add a user/ group to a group, it is the group that gets modified with the new members and this reflects in the user/ group object that we see. ADUC makes the change on the user/ group, but the DSA makes the real change behind the scenes. The cause and effect is backwards here …
    • Another obvious but not so obvious point is that when you add a user/ group to a group, it is the group’s whenChanged attribute that gets changed and it is the change to the group that is replicated throughout the domain. The user object has no change and nothing regarding it is replicated. Obvious again, because the change really happens on the group and the effect we see on the user/ group is what AD calculates and shows us. 
  • Multivalued attributes, as the name suggests, are attributes that can hold multiple values. Again, a good example would be group membership. The member and memberOf attributes mentioned above are also multivalued attributes. Obvious, because a group can contain multiple members, and a user/ group can be a member of multiple groups. Multivalued attributes can be identified by an attribute isSingleValued in their attributeSchema definition. If this value is TRUE it’s a single valued attribute, else its a multivalued attribute.

How the AD Replication Model Works

(source)

A must read post if you are interested in the details! 

On replication

  • AD objects have attributes. AD replicates data at the attribute level – i.e. only changes to the attributes are replicated, not the entire object itself. 
    • Attributes that cannot be changed (for e.g. back links, administrative attributes) are never replicated. 
  • Updates from the same directory partition are replicated as a unit to the destination DC – i.e. over the same network connection – to optimize network traffic.
  • Updates are always specific a single directory partition. 
  • Replication of data between DCs consist of replication cycles (i.e. the DCs keep replicating until all the data has replicated). 
    • There’s no limit to the number of values that can be transferred in a replication cycle. 
    • The transfer of data happens via replication packets. Approximately 100 values can be transferred per packet. 
      • Replication packets encode the data using ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation One) BER (Basic Encoding Rules). Check out Wikipedia and this post for more information on ASN.1 BER (note: ASN.1 defines the syntax; BER defines the encoding. There are many other encodings such as CER, DER, XER but BER is what LDAP uses). See this blog post for an example LDAP message (scroll down to the end). 
    • Once a replication cycle has begun, all updates on the source DC – including updates that occur during the replication cycle – are send to the destination DC. 
    • If an attribute changes multiple times between replication cycles only the latest value is replicated. 
    • As soon as an attribute is written to the AD database of a DC, it is available for replication. 
  • The number of values that can be written in a single database transaction (i.e. the destination DC has all the updates and needs to commit them to the AD database) is 5000. 
    • All updates to a single object are guaranteed to be written as a single database transaction. This way the state of an object is always consistent with the DC and there are no partially updated objects. 
      • However, for updates to a large number of values to multivalued attributes (e.g. the member attribute from the examples above) the update may not happen in the same transaction. In such cases the values are still guaranteed to be written in the same replication cycle (i.e. all updates from the source DC to that object will be written before the DC performs another replication cycle). (This exception for multivalued attributes is from Server 2003 and above domains, I think).
    • Prior to Windows Server 2003, when a multivalued attribute had a change the entire attribute was replicated (i.e. the smallest change that could be replicated was an attribute). 
      • For example, if a multivalued attribute such as member (referring to the members of a group) had 300 entries and now an additional entry was added, all 301 entries were replicated rather than just the new entry. 
      • So if a group had 5000 members and you added an extra member, 5001 entries were replicated as updates to its member attribute. Since that is larger than the number of values that can be committed in a single transaction, it would fail. Hence the maximum number of members in a group in a Windows 2000 forest functional level domain was 5000. 
    • Starting from Windows Server 2003, when a multivalued attribute has a change only the changed value is replicated (i.e. the smallest change that can be replicated is a value). Thus groups in Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 interim functional level domains don’t have the limitation of 5000 members. 
      • This feature is known as Linked Value Replication (LVR). I mentioned this in an earlier post of mine in the context of having multiple domains vs a single domain. Not only does LVR remove limitations such as the above, it also leads to efficient replication by reducing the network traffic.
      • When a Windows 2000 forest level domain is raised to Windows 2003/ 2003 interim forest level, existing multivalued attributes are not affected in any way. (If they were, there’d be huge network traffic as these changes propagate through the domain). Only when the multivalued attribute is modified does it convert to a replicate as single values. 
  • Earlier I mentioned how all attributes are actually objects of the class attributeSchema.  The AD schema is what defines attributes and the relations between them.
    • Before replication between two DCs can happen, the replication system (DRS – see below) checks whether the schema of both DCs match. If the schemas do not match, replication is rescheduled until the schemas match (makes sense – if replication happens between DCs with different schemas, the attributes may have different meanings and relationships, and replication could mess things up). 
    • If the forest schema is changed, schema replication takes precedence over all other replication. In fact, all other replication is blocked until the schema replicates. 

Architecture

  • On each DC, replication operates within the Directory System Agent (DSA) component – ntdsa.dll. 
    • DSA is the interface through which clients and other DCs gain access to the AD database of that DC. 
    • DSA is also the LDAP server. Directory-aware applications (basically, LDAP-aware applications) access DSA via the LDAP protocol or LDAP C API, through the wldap32.dll component  (am not very clear about this bit). LDAPv3 is used. 
  • A sub-component of the DSA is DRS (Directory Replication System) using the DRS RPC protocol (Microsoft’s specification of this protocol can be found at this MSDN link). Client & server components of the DRS interact with each other to transfer and apply updates between DCs. 
    • Updates happen in two ways: via RPC or SMTP (the latter is only for non-domain updates, which I infer to mean Schema or Configuration partition updates) 
    • Domain joined computers have a component called ntdsapi.dll which lets them communicate with DCs over RPC.
      • This is what domain joined computers use to communicate with the DC.
      • This is also what tools such as repadmin.exe or AD Sites and Services (dssites.msc) use to communicate with the DC (even if these tools are running on the DC). 
    • DCs additionally have a private version of ntdsapi.dll which lets them replicate with other DCs over RPC. (I infer the word “private” here to mean it’s meant only for DCs).
      • As mentioned earlier, DC to DC replication can also bypass RPC and use SMTP instead. Then the ntdsapi.dll component is not used. Other components, such as ISMServ.exe and the CDO library are used in that case. Remember: this is only for non-domain updates. 
    • The RPC interface used by DRS is called drsuapi. It provides the functions (also see this link) for replication and management. Check this section of the TechNet post for an architecture diagram and description of the components. 
      • The TechNet post also mentions DRS.idl. This is a file that contains the interface and type library definitions. 
  • The DSA also has a sub-component for performing low-level operations on the AD database. 
  • The DSA also has a sub-component that provides an API for applications to access the AD database. 
    • The AD database is called ntds.dit (DIT == Directory Information Tree; see this link for more info). The database engine is Extensible Storage Engine (ESE; esent.dll)

Characteristics of AD replication

  • Multimaster
    • Changes can be made to any DCs (as long as they are authoritative for the objects).
  • Pull
    • When an update occurs on a DC it notifies its partners. The partners then requests (pulls) changes from the source DC. 
  • Store-and-forward
    • When a DC receives a change from its partners, it stores the change and in-turn forwards on to others (i.e. informs others so they can issue pull requests from itself). Thus, the DC where a change is made does not have to update every other DCs in the domain. 
    • Because of the store-and-forward mechanism replication must be thought of as sequentially moving through the domain. 
  • State-based
    • Each DC has metadata to know the “state” of its replicas. This state is compared with that of its partner to identify the changes required. (This is in contrast to log-based replication where each DC keeps a log of changes it made and sends that log to its partners so they can replay the log and update themselves). 
    • This makes uses of metadata such as Update Sequence Number (USN), Up-to-dateness vector, and High-watermark vector. Synchronized time is not primarily used or required to keep track of this (it is used, but in addition to other mechanisms). 

Updates

LDAP/ AD supports the following four types of update requests:

  • Add an object to the directory.
  • Delete an object from the directory. 
  • Modify (add, delete, remove) attribute values of an existing object in the directory. 
  • Move an object by changing the name or parent of the object. 

Each of the above update requests generates a separate write transaction (because remember, all updates to a single object happen in a single transaction). Updates are an all-or-nothing event. If multiple attributes of an object are updated, and even one of those updates fail when writing to the database, all attributes fail and are not updated. 

Once an update request is committed to the database it is called an originating update. When a DC receives an originating update, writes it to its database, and sends out updates to other DCs these are called replication updates. There is no one-to-one relation between originating updates and replication updates. For instance, a DC could receive multiple originating updates to an object – possible even from different DCs – and then send a replication update with the new state of that object. (Remember: AD is state-based, not log-based. It is the state that matters, not the steps taken to reach that state). 

Adding request:

  • Creates a new object with a unique objectGUID attribute. Values of all replicated attributes are set to Version = 1. (The Version attribute will be discussed later, below). 
  • The add request fails if the parent object does not exist or the DC does not contain a writeable replica of the parent object’s directory partition. 

Modify request:

  • If an attribute is deleted then its value is set with NULL and Version is incremented. 
  • If values are to be added/ removed from an attribute, it is done so and the attribute Version is incremented. The Modify request compares the existing and new values. If there are no changes then nothing happens – the request is ignored, the Version does not change. 

Move request:

  • This is a special case of the Modify request in that only the name attribute is changed. 

Delete request:

  • The isDeleted attribute is set to TRUE. This marks the object as tombstoned (i.e. deleted but not removed from AD). 
  • The DN of the object is set to a value that cannot be set by an LDAP application (i.e. an impossible value). 
  • Except a few important attributes, the rest are stripped from the object (“stripped”, not removed as one would do above). 
  • The object itself is moved to the Deleted Objects container. 

Certain objects are protected from deletion:

  • Cross-references (class crossRef) and RID Object for the DC. Any delete request for these objects are rejected. And any originating update deletion of these objects is rejected, and all attributes of the object are updated (Version incremented) so the object replicates to other DCs and is reanimated wherever it was deleted.  
    • Cross-references are present in the Configuration partition: CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration,DC=(domain)
    • RID Objects are present under each DC at CN=RID Set,CN=(DC),OU=Domain Controllers,DC=(domain)
  • The NTDS Settings (class nTDSDSA) object.
    • This object represents the DSA (Directory System Agent). It is present in the Configuration partition under the site and DC: CN=NTDS Settings,CN=(DC),CN=Servers,CN=(SITE),CN=Sites,CN=Configuration,DC=(domain)
    • Remember, the DSA is the LDAP server within the DC. The DSA’s GUID is what we see when DCs replicate or in their DNS names (DSAGUID._msdcs.domain is a CNAME to the DC name).
    • The objectGUID of the DC object is not the same as the objectGUID of its DSA object. The latter is what matters. When a DC computer object is opened in ADUC, it is possible to view the corresponding DSA object by clicking on the “NTDS Settings” button in the first tab. 
    • Trivia: to find all the DCs in a forest one can query for objects of class nTDSDSA. Below query, for instance, finds all objects of that class and returns their DN and objectGUID. 

      nTDSDSA

    • When a DC is demoted, its DSA object is deleted but not really deleted. It is protected and disabled from receiving replication requests. Thus, a query such as the above will return DSA objects of DCs that may no longer exist in the forest.

      A better way to structure the above query then would be to also filter out objects whose isDeleted attribute is not TRUE.

      nTDSDSA-2

Conflicts

AD does not depend on timestamps to resolve conflicts. In case of conflicts the “volatility” of changes is what primarily matters. That is, if an attribute was updated twice on one DC and thrice on another DC, even if the timestamps of changes from the first DC are later than the second DC, the change from the second DC will win because the attribute was updated thrice there. More on this in my next post. 

Database GUID

I mentioned above that each DSA has its own objectGUID. This GUID is created with the server is promoted to a DC and deleted (sort of) when the DC is demoted. Thus the GUID is present for the lifetime of the DC and doesn’t change even if the DC name changes. 

The AD database (ntds.dit) on each DC has its own GUID. This GUID is stored in the invocationId attribute of the DSA. Unlike the DSA GUID, the database GUID can change. This happens when (1) the DC is demoted and re-promoted (so the database changes), (2) when an application NC is added/ removed to the DC, (3) when the DC/ database is restored from a backup, or (4) (only in Server 2012 and above) whenever a DC running in a VM is snapshotted or copied.

The invocationId attribute can be viewed via ldp.exe as above, or in the “NTDS Settings” of the DC computer object in AD Users & Computers, or in the “NTDS Settings” in AD Sites & Services. It can also be viewed in the output of repadmin.exe.

The invocationID is a part of replication requests (more later). When the invocationID changes other know that they have to replicate changes to this DC so it can catch up. The first DC in a domain will have its invocationID and objectGUID as same (until the invocationID changes). All other DCs will have different values for these both. 

Update Sequence Numbers (USNs)

(I was planning on covering this separately as part of my AD Troubleshooting WorkshopPLUS posts, but USNs are mentioned in this TechNet post so I might as well cover them now). 

USNs are 64-bit counters maintained on each DC. The number is different for each DC and is stored in the highestCommittedUsn attribute of the rootDSE object.

rootDSE is an imaginary object. It is the root of the directory namespace. Under it we have the various domain partitions, configuration partition, schema partition, and application partitions. rootDSE can be queried to find the various partitions known to the DC. It can be viewed through ADSI Edit or ldp.exe (the latter makes it easier to view all the attributes together).

rootDSE

As can be seen in the screenshot above, one of the attributes is highestCommittedUSN.

Each time a DC commits an update (originating update/ replication update), it updates the highestCommittedUSN attribute. Thus the USN is associated with each successful transaction to the AD database. Remember: all updates to a single object are written in a single transaction, so a USN is essentially associated with each successful update to an object – be it a single attribute, or multiple updates to the same/ multiple attributes (but all written in the same transaction). 

USNs are update incrementally for each write transaction. So, for example, when I took the above screenshot the USN for WIN-DC02 was 77102. When I am writing this paragraph (the next day) the USN is 77230. This means between yesterday and today WIN-DC02 has written 128 transactions (77230-77102) to its database.  

Every attribute of an object has a USN associated with it. This is a part of the replication metadata for that object, and can be viewed through the repadmin.exe command. For instance, using the /showobjmeta switch (note that here we specify DC first and then object):

Notice how the attribute USNs vary between the two DCs. Also notice the metadata stored – the Local USN, the originating DSA, the Originating DSA's USN, the timestamp of the update, and Version. If you are running the above command it is best to set the command prompt window width to 160, else the output doesn’t make much sense. I will talk about Local USN and Originating USN in a moment. 

Another switch is /showmeta (here we specify the object first and then the DC):

Both switches seem to produce the same output. The important items are the Local USN and Originating USN, and the Version. 

  • Version starts from 1 and is incremented for each update. Version will be same on all DCs – when an DC commits an update request (originating update or replication update) it will increment the Version. Since all attributes start with the same Version = 1, the current value will be the same on all DCs. 
  • Local USN is the USN value for that attribute on the DC we are looking at. It is the value of the highestCommittedUSN for the transaction that committed the update to this attribute/ set of attributes. 
  • Originating USN is the USN for that attribute on the DSA where the originating update was sent from.

For instance: the attribute description. WIN-DC01 has local USN 46335, WIN-DC02 has 19340, and WIN-DC03 has 8371. The latter two DCs got their update for this attribute from WIN-DC01 so they show the originating DSA as WIN-DC01 and the Originating USN as 46335.

Every object has an attribute called uSNChanged. This is the highest Local USN among all the attributes of that object. (What this means is that from the USN of an object we can see which of its attributes have the same local USN and so easily determine the attributes changed last). Unlike the attribute USNs which are metadata, uSNChanged is an object attribute and thus can be viewed via ADSI Edit or ADUC. From the command line, repadmin.exe with the /showattr switch can be used to view all attributes of an object (this switch takes the DC name first, then the object). 

Above output tells me that on WIN-DC01 the uSNChanged for this object is 46335.  From the earlier /showobjmeta output I know that only the description attribute has that local USN, so now I know this was the last attribute changed for this object. 

So, to recap: DCs have a USN counter stored in highestCommitedUSN attribute. This counter is updated for each successful write transaction to the database. Since writes happen per object, it means this USN is updated every time an object is updated in the database. Each object attribute has its own USN – this too is per DC, but is not an attribute, it is metadata. Finally, each object has a uSNChanged attribute which is simply the highest attribute USN of that object. This too is per DC as the attribute USN is per DC. The DC’s highestCommittedUSN attribute and an object’s uSNChanged attribute are related thus: 

  • When an attribute update is committed to the database the DC’s highestCommittedUSN is incremented by 1.
  • The Local USN of the attribute/ attributes is set to this new highestCommittedUSN. 
  • This in turns updates the object’s uSNChanged to be the new highestCommittedUSN (because that is the highest attribute Local USN now)

Thus, the highestCommittedUSN is the highest uSNChanged attribute among all the replicas held by the DC.  

Here’s an example. First I note the DC’s highestCommitedUSN (I have removed the other attributes from the output). 

Then I note an object’s uSNChanged:

Now I connect via ADUC and change the description field. Note the new USN. 

And note the DC’s USN:

It has increased, but due to the other changes happening on the DC it is about 10 higher than the uSNChanged of the object I updated. I searched the other replicas on my DC for changes but couldn’t find anything. (I used a filter like (uSNChanged>=125979) in ldp.exe and searched every replica but couldn’t find any other changes. Maybe I missed some replica – dunno!) This behavior is observed by others too. (From the previous linked forum post I came across this blog post. Good read).  

Finally, I must point out that even though I said the attribute metadata (Local USN, Originating USN, Originating DSA, Originating Time/ Date, Version) are not stored as attributes, that is not entirely correct. Each object has an attribute called replPropertyMetaData. This is an hexadecimal value that contains the metadata stored as a binary value. In fact, if we right click on an object in ldp.exe it is possible to view the replication metadata because ldp.exe will read the above attribute and output its contents in a readable form. 

ldp-metadata

Bear in mind this attribute is not replicated. It is an attribute that cannot be administratively changed, so can never be updated by end-users and doesn’t need replicating. It is only calculated and maintained by each DC. uSNChanged is a similar attribute – not replicated, only administratively changed. 

Note to self: I need to investigate further but it looks like uSNChanged cannot be viewed by ldp.exe for all objects. For instance, ldp.exe shows this attribute for one user object in my domain but not for the other! I think that’s because the attribute is generated by the AD tools when we view it. repadmin.exe and the GUI tools show it always. Similarly, the attribute level metadata attribute too cannot be viewed by ldp.exe for all objects. For some objects it gives an error that the replPropertyMetaData attribute cannot be found and so cannot show the replication metadata. This could also be why there was a gap between the uSNChanged and highestCommittedUSN above. 

High-watermark Vector (HWMV) & Up-to-dateness Vector (UTDV)

To recap once more, what we know so far is:

  • Every attribute has replication metadata that contains its Local USN, the originating DSA's USN, the originating DSA, the timestamp, and Version. 
  • The highest Local USN of an attribute is stored as the object’s uSNChanged attribute. 
  • The highest uSNChanged attribute among all objects on all replicas held by the DSA is stored as its highestCommittedUSN attribute in the rootDSA. 
  • All these USN counters are local to the DC (except for the Originating USN which is local to that the originating DSA). 

How can DCs replicate with each other using the above info? Two things are used for this: High-watermark vector and Up-to-dateness vector. 

The HWMV is a table maintained on each DC.

  • There is one table for each directory partition the DC holds replicas for (so at minimum there will be three HWMV tables – for the domain partition, the Schema partition, and the Configuration partition). 
  • The HWMV table contains the highest USN of the updates the DC has received from each of its replication partners for that replica. Note: the table contains the USN that’s local to the replication partner.
  • Thus the HWMV can be thought of as a table contain the highest uSNChanged value for each directory partition of its replication partners when they last replicated.

Got it? Now whenever a DC needs to replicate with another DC, all it needs to do is ask it for each of the changes since the last uSNChanged value the destination is aware of! Neat, right! The process looks roughly like this:

  1. The originating DC will have some changes. These changes will cause uSNChanged values of the affected objects to change. The highestCommittedUSN of the DC too changes. All these are local changes.
  2. Now the DC will inform all its replication partners that there are changes. 
  3. Each of these replication partners will send their HWMV for the partition in question.
  4. From the received HWMV table, the originating DC can work what changes need to be sent to the destination DC. 
    1. The originating DC now knows what USNs it needs to look for. From this it knows what objects, and in turn which of their attributes, were actually changed. So it sends just these changed attributes to the destination DC. 

To make the process of replication faster, all DCs have one more table. That is the Up-to-dateness Vector (UTDV).

  • Like the HWMV, this too is for every replica the DC holds. 
  • Unlike the HWMV this contains the highest USN of the updates the DC has received from every other DC in the domain/ forest for that replica. 
  • The table also contains the timestamp of last successful replication with each of those DCs for that replica.

The UTDV table has a different purpose to the HWMV. This table is sent by the destination DC to the originating DC when it requests for changes – i.e. in step 3 above.

When the originating DC gets the UTDV table for its destination DC, it can look at the table and note the destination DC’s highest received USNs for that partition from other DCs. Maybe the destination DC has asked for changes from USN number x upwards (the USN number being of the originating DC). But these changes were already received by the destination DC from another DC, under USN number y and upwards (the USN number being of that other DC). The destination DC does not know that the changes requested by USN x and upwards are already with it from another DC, but by looking at the UTDV table the originating DC can see that USNs y and above already contain the changes the destination DC is requesting, so it can filter out those updates when sending. (This feature is called “propagation dampening”). 

  • In practice, once the originating DC compiles a list of USNs that need to be sent to the destination DC – at step 4 above – it goes through its replication metadata to check each attribute and the originating DSA and originating USN associated with that attribute.
  • The originating DC then looks at the UTDV table of the destination DC, specifically at the entry for the DC that had sent it an update for the changed attribute. (This DC could be same as the originating DC). From the table it can see what USNs from this DC are already present at the destination DC. If the USN value in the table is higher than the USN value of the attribute, it means the destination DC already has the change with it. So the originating DC can filter out these and similar attributes from sending to the destination DC.  

Thus the UTDV table works along with the HWMV table to speed up replication (and also avoid loops wherein one DC updates another DC who updates the first DC and thus they keep looping). And that is how replications happen behind the scenes! 

Once a destination DC updates itself from an originating DC – i.e. the replication cycle completes – the source DC sends its UTDV table to the destination DC. The destination DC then updates its UTDV table with the info from the received UTDV table. Each entry in the received table is compared with the one it has and one of the following happens:

  • If the received table has an entry that the destination DC’s UTDV table does not have – meaning there’s another DC for this replica that it isn’t aware of, this DC has replicated successfully with the originating DC and so all the info it has is now also present with the destination DC, and so it is as good as saying this new DC has replicated with the destination DC and we are aware of it the same way the originating DC is aware – so a new entry is added to the destination DC’s UTDV table with the name of this unknown DC and the corresponding info from the received UTDV table. 
  • If the received table has an entry that the destination DC’s UTDV table already has, and its USN value is higher than what the destination DC’s table notes – meaning whatever changes this known DC had for this partition has already replicated with the originating DC and thus the destination DC – and so its entry in the UTDV can actually be updated, the UTDV table for that server is updated with the value from the received UTDV table.  

The UTDV table also records timestamps along with the USN value. This way DCs can quickly identify other DCs that are not replicating. These timestamps record the time the DC last replicated with the other DC – either directly or indirectly. 

Both HWMV and UTDV tables also include the invocationID (the database GUID) of the DCs. Thus, if a DC’s database is restored and its invocationID changes, other DCs can take this into account and replicate any changes they might have already replicated in the past.  

From the book I am reading side-by-side (excellent book, highly recommended!) I learnt that apart from the HWMV and UTDV tables and the naming context it wants to replicate, the destination DC also sends two other pieces of info to originating DC. These are: (1) the maximum number of object updates the destination DC wishes to receive during that replication cycle, and (2) the maximum number of values the destination DC wishes to receive during that replication cycle. I am not entirely clear what these two do. Once a replication cycle begins all object updates and values are sent to the destination DC, so the two pieces above seems to be about whether all the updates are sent in one replication packet or whether they are split and sent in multiple packets. The maximum number of values in a single packet is about 100, so I guess these two numbers are useful if you can only accept less than 100 values per packet – possibly due to network constraints. 

More later …

Unfortunately I have to take a break with this post here. I am about halfway down the TechNet post but I am pressed for time at the moment so rather than keep delaying this post I am going to publish it now and continue with the rest in another post (hopefully I get around to writing it!). As a note to myself, I am currently at the Active Directory Data Updates section, in the sub-section called “Multimaster Conflict Resolution Policy”.

[Aside] Multiple domain forests

Posted: December 29th, 2014 | Tags: , | Category: Asides, Infrastructure, Windows | §

Was reading about multiple domains/ child domains in a forest and came across these interesting posts. They talk pretty much the same stuff. 

Key points are:

  • In the past a domain was considered to be the security boundary. But since Windows 2000 a domain is no longer considered a security boundary, a forest is.
  • Domain Admins from child domain can gain access to control the forest. The posts don’t explain how but allude that it is possible and widely known.
  • Another reason for multiple domains was password policies. In Windows Server 2000 and 2003 password policies were per domain. But since Windows Server 2008 it is possible to define Fine-Grain Password Policies (FGPPs) that can override the default domain password policy. 
  • Multiple domains were also used when security was a concern. Maybe a remote location had poor security and IT Admins weren’t comfortable with having all the domain usernames and password replicating to DCs in such locations. Solution was the create a separate domain with just the users of that domain. But since Windows Server 2008 we have Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODCs) that do not store any password and can be set to cache passwords of only specified users.
  • Yet another reason for multiple domains was DNS replication. In Windows Server 2000 AD integrated DNS zones replicated to all DCs of the domain – that is, even DCs not holding the DNS role. To avoid such replication traffic multiple domains were created so the DNS replication was limited to only DCs of those domains. Again, starting Windows Server 2003 we have Application Partitions which can be set to replicate to specific DCs. In fact, Server 2003 introduced two Application Partitions specifically for DNS – a Forest DNS Zone partition, and a Domain DNS Zone partition (per domain). These replicate to all DCs that are also DNS servers in the forest and domain respectively, thus reducing DNS replication traffic. 
  • Something I wasn’t aware of until I read these articles was the Linked Value Replication (LVR). In Server 2000 whenever an attribute changed the entire attribute was replicated – for example, if a user is added to a group, the list of all group members is replicated – obviously too much traffic, and yet another reason for multiple domains (to contain the replication traffic). But since Server 2003 we have LVR which only replicates the change – thus, if a user is added to the group, only the addition is replicated. 

One recommendation (itself a matter of debate and recommended against in the above two posts) is to have two domains in the forest with one of them being a placeholder:

  1. A root domain, which will be the forest root domain and will contain the forest FSMO roles as well as Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins; and 
  2. A child domain, which will be the regular domain and will contain everything else (all the OUs, users, Domain Admins)

The root domain will not contain any objects except the Enterprise & Schema admins and the DCs. Check out this article for a nice picture and more details on this model. It’s worth pointing out that such a model is only recommended for medium to large domains, not small domains (because of overhead of maintaining two domains with the additional DCs).

Also check out this post on domain models in general. It is a great post and mentions the “placeholder forest root domain” model of above and how it is often used. From the comments I learnt why it’s better to create child domains rather than peer domains in case of the placeholder forest root domain model. If you create peers there’s no way to indicate a specific domain is the forest root – from the name they all appear the same – while if you create child domains you can easily identify who the forest root is. Also, with child domains you know that the parent forest root domain is important because you can’t remove that domain (without realizing its role) because the child domain namespace depends on it. Note that creating a domain as child to another does not give Domain Admins of the latter administrative rights to it (except of course if these Domain Admins are also Enterprise Admins). The domain is a child only in that its namespace is a child. The two domains have a two way trust relationship – be it peers or parent/ child – so users can logon to each domain using credentials from their domain, but they have no other rights unless explicitly granted. 

The authors of the “Active Directory (5th ed.)” book (a great book!) recommend keeping things simple and avoiding placeholder forest root domains.

Active Directory: Domain Controller critical services

Posted: November 25th, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Category: Infrastructure, Windows | §

The first of my (hopefully!) many posts on Active Directory, based on the WorkshopPLUS sessions I attended last month. Progress is slow as I don’t have much time, plus I am going through the slides and my notes and adding more information from the Internet and such. 

This one’s on the services that are critical for Domain Controllers to function properly. 

DHCP Client

  • In Server 2003 and before the DHCP Client service registers A, AAAA, and PTR records for the DC with DNS
  • In Server 2008 and above this is done by the DNS Client
  • Note that only the A and PTR records are registered. Other records are by the Netlogon service.

File Replication Services (FRS)

  • Replicates SVSVOL amongst DCs.
  • Starting with Server 2008 it is now in maintenance mode. DFSR replaces it.
    • To check whether your domain is still using FRS for SYSVOL replication, open the DFS Management console and see whether the “Domain System Volume” entry is present under “Replication” (if it is not, see whether it is available for adding to the display). If it is present then your domain is using DFSR for SYSVOL replication.
    • Alternatively, type the following command on your DC. If the output says “Eliminated” as below, your domain is using DFSR for SYSVOL. (Note this only works with domain functional level 2008 and above).
  • Stopping FRS for long periods can result in Group Policy distribution errors as SYSVOL isn’t replicated. Event ID 13568 in FRS log.

Distributed File System Replication (DFSR)

  • Replicates SYSVOL amongst DCs. Replaced functionality previously provided by FRS. 
  • DFSR was introduced with Server 2003 R2.
  • If the domain was born functional level 2008 – meaning all DCs are Server 2008 or higher – DFSR is used for SYSVOL replication.
    •  Once all pre-Server 2008 DCs are removed FRS can be migrated to DFSR. 
    • Apart from the dfsrmig command mentioned in the FRS section, the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\DFSR\Parameters\SysVols\Migrating Sysvols\LocalState registry key can also be checked to see if DFSR is in use (a value of 3 means it is in use). 
  • If a DC is offline/ disconnected from its peers for a long time and Content Freshness Protection is turned on, when the DC is online/ reconnected DFSR might block SYSVOL replications to & from this DC – resuling in Group Policy distribution errors.
    • Content Freshness Protection is off by default. It needs to be manually turned on for each server.
    • Run the following command on each server to turn it on:

      Replace 60 with the maximum number of days it is acceptable for a DC or DFSR member to be offline. The recommended value is 60 days. And to turn off:

      To view the current setting:

    • Content Freshness Protection exists because of the way deletions work.
      • DFSR is multi-master, like AD, which means changes can be made on any server.
      • When you delete an item on one server, it can’t simply be deleted because then the item won’t exist any more and there’s no way for other servers to know if that’s the case because the item was deleted or because it wasn’t replicated to that server in the first place.
      • So what happens is that a deleted item is “tombstoned“. The item is removed from disk but a record for it remains the in DFSR database for 60 days (this period is called the “tombstone lifetime”) indicating this item as being deleted.
      • During these 60 days other DFSR servers can learn that the item is marked as deleted and thus act upon their copy of the item. After 60 days the record is removed from the database too.
      • In such a context, say we have DC that is offline for more than 60 days and say we have other DCs where files were removed from SYSVOL (replicated via DFSR). All the other DCs no longer have a copy of the file nor a record that it is deleted as 60 days has past and the file is removed for good.
      • When the previously offline DC replicates, it still has a copy of the file and it will pass this on to the other DCs. The other DCs don’t remember that this file was deleted (because they don’t have a record of its deletion any more as as 60 days has past) and so will happily replicate this file to their folders – resulting in a deleted file now appearing and causing corruption.
      • It is to avoid such situations that Content Freshness Protection was invented and is recommended to be turned on.
    • Here’s a good blog post from the Directory Services team explaining Content Freshness Protection.

DNS Client

  • For Server 2008 and above registers the A, AAAA, and PTR records for the DC with DNS (notice that when you change the DC IP address you do not have to update DNS manually – it is updated automatically. This is because of the DNS Client service).
  • Note that only the A, AAAA, and PTR records are registered. Other records are by the Netlogon service.  

DNS Server

  •  The glue for Active Directory. DNS is what domain controllers use to locate each other. DNS is what client computers use to find domain controllers. If this service is down both these functions fail.  

Kerberos Distribution Center (KDC)

  • Required for Kerberos 5.0 authentication. AD domains use Kerberos for authentication. If the KDC service is stopped Kerberos authentication fails. 
  • NTLM is not affected by this service. 

Netlogon

  • Maintains the secure channel between DCs and domain members (including other DCs). This secure channel is used for authentication (NTLS and Kerberos) and DC replication.
  • Writes the SRV and other records to DNS. These records are what domain members use to find DCs.
    • The records are also written to a file %systemroot%\system32\config\Netlogon.DNS. If the DNS server doesn’t support dynamic updates then the records in this text file must be manually created on the DNS server. 

Windows Time

  • Acts as an NTP client and server to keep time in sync across the domain. If this service is down and time is not in sync then Kerberos authentication and AD replication will fail (see resolution #5 in this link).
    • Kerberos authentication may not necessarily break for newer versions of Windows. But AD replication is still sensitive to time.  
  • The PDC of the forest root domain is the master time keeper of the forest. All other DCs in the forest will sync time from it.
    • The Windows Time service on every domain member looks to the DC that authenticates them for time time updates.
    • DCs in the domain look to the domain PDC for time updates. 
    • Domain PDCs look to the domain PDC of the domain above/ sibling to them. Except the forest root domain PDC who gets time from an external source (hardware source, Internet, etc).
  • From this link: there are two registry keys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config\MaxPosPhaseCorrection and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config\MaxNegPhaseCorrection that restrict the time updates accepted by the Windows Time service to the number of seconds defined by these values (the maximum and minimum range). This can be set directly in the registry or via a GPO. The recommended value is 172800 (i.e. 48 hours).

w32tm

The w32tm command can be used to manage time. For instance:

  • To get an idea of the time situation in the domain (who is the master time keeper, what is the offset of each of the DCs from this time keeper):
  • To ask the Windows Time service to resync as soon as possible (the command can target a remote computer too via the /computer: switch)

    • Same as above but before resyncing redetect any network configuration changes and rediscover the sources:
  • To get the status of the local computer (use the /computer: switch to target a different computer)
  • To show what time sources are being used:
  • To show who the peers are:
  • To show the current time zone:

    • You can’t change the time zone using this command; you have to do:

On the PDC in the forest root domain you would typically run a command like this if you want it to get time from an NTP pool on the Internet:

Here’s what the command does:

  • specify a list of peers to sync time from (in this example the NTP Pool servers on the Internet);
  • the /update switch tells w32tm to update the Windows Time service with this configuration change;
  • the /syncfromflags:MANUAL tells the Windows Time service that it must only sync from these sources (other options such as “DOMHIER” tells it to sync from the domain peers only, “NO” tells it sync from none, “ALL” tells it to sync from both the domain peers and this manual list);
  • the /reliable:YES switch marks this machine as special in that it is a reliable source of time for the domain (read this link on what gets set when you set a machine as RELIABLE).

Note: You must manually configure the time source on the PDC in the forest root domain and mark it as reliable. If that server were to fail and you transfer the role to another DC, be sure to repeat the step. 

On other machines in the domain you would run a command like this:

This tells those DCs to follow the domain hierarchy (and only the domain hierarchy) and that they are not reliable time sources (this switch is not really needed if these other DCs are not PDCs).

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)

  • Provides the DC services. If this service is stopped the DC stops acting as a DC. 
  • Pre-Server 2008 this service could not be stopped while the OS was online. But since Server 2008 it can be stopped and started. 

Active Directory Web Services (AD WS)

  • Introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 to provide a web service interface to Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Active Directory Lightweight Domain Services (AD LDS), and Active Directory Database Mounting Tool instances running on the DC.
    • The Active Directory Database Mounting Tool was new to me so here’s a link to what it does. It’s a pretty cool tool. Starting from Server 2008 you can take AD DS and AD LDS snapshots via the Volume Snapshots Service (VSS) (I am writing a post on VSS side by side so expect to see one soon). This makes use of the NTDS VSS writer which ensures that consistent snapshots of the AD databases can be taken. The AD snapshots can be taken manually via the ntdsutil snapshot command or via backup software  or even via images of the whole system. Either ways, once you have such snapshots you can mount the one(s) you want via ntdsutil and point Active Directory Database Mounting Tool to it. As the tool name says it “mounts” the AD database in the snapshot and exposes it as an LDAP server. You can then use tools such as ldp.exe of the AD Users and Computers to go through this instance of the AD database. More info on this tool can be found at this and this link.
  • AD WS is what the PowerShell Active Directory module connects to. 
  • It is also what the new Active Directory Administrative Center (which in turn uses PowerShell) too connects to.
  • AD WS is installed automatically when the AD DS or AD LDS roles are installed. It is only activated once the server is promoted to a DC or if and AD LDS instance is created on it.