Your Own Server Part 2: Windows Server 2003 Installation

Active Directory Implementation, Continued

Active Directory uses its own database system in order to manage the described information efficiently. Provided your environment could grow quickly and the server could take on additional tasks, the database as well as the log files should be swapped out to a separate hard disk in order to keep system performance as high as possible.

The SYSVOL folder is another specialty of the Active Directory because its contents are replicated by all the Active Directory controllers in a domain. This includes login scripts, group policies and other things that must be available on other servers as well. The location of this folder can of course be changed according to need.

This option is only important if you have to use Windows NT computers with domain structure.

During the course of the installation, the AD assistant will complain that there is still no DNS server running. Therefore, we choose the option to start it up as well after setting up the Active Directory.