Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
you can take advantage of its storage mechanism and replication topology. Application-
related information stored on domain controllers benefits from having fault-tolerance
features and availability.
Consider the following simple example to understand how this can work. Suppose
your organization has developed a customer Sales Tracking and Inventory application.
The company needs to make the information that is stored by this application available to
all of its branch offices and users located throughout the world. However, the goal is to do
this with the least amount of IT administrative effort. Assuming that Active Directory has
already been deployed throughout the organization, developers can build support into the
application for storing data within Active Directory. They can then rely on Active Directory
to store and synchronize the information among various sites. When users request updated
data from the application, the application can obtain this information from the nearest
domain controller that hosts a replica of the Sales Tracking and Inventory data.
Other types of applications can also benefit greatly from the use of application data par-
titions. Now that you have a good understanding of the nature of application data parti-
tions, let's take a look at how you can create and manage them using Windows Server 2012
R2 and Active Directory.
Creating Application Data Partitions
By default, after you create an Active Directory environment, you will not have any cus-
tomer application data partitions. Therefore, the first step in making this functionality
available is to create a new application data partition. You can use several tools to do this:
Third-Party Applications or Application-Specific Tools Generally, if you are planning to
install an application that can store information in the Active Directory database, you'll
receive some method of administering and configuring that data along with the application.
For example, the setup process for the application might assist you in the steps you need
to take to set up a new application data partition and to create the necessary structures for
storing data.
Creating and managing application data partitions are advanced Active
Directory-related functions. Be sure that you have a solid understanding of
the Active Directory schema, Active Directory replication, LDAP, and your
applications' needs before you attempt to create new application data par-
titions in a live environment.
Active Directory Service Interfaces ADSI is a set of programmable objects that can be
accessed through languages such as Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), Visual C#,
Visual Basic .NET, and many other language technologies that support the Component
Object Model (COM) standard. Through the use of ADSI, developers can create, access,
and update data stored in Active Directory and in any application data partitions.
The LDP Tool You can view and modify the contents of the Active Directory schema
using LDAP-based queries. The LDP tool allows you to view information about application
data partitions.
 
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