5.What is the SYSVOL folder?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista)

System Volume (SYSVOL) is a shared directory that stores the server copy of the domain public files (Policies and scripts) that must be shared for common access and replication throughout a domain. It must be located in NTFS volume (because junctions are used within the SYSVOL folder structure)

4.Where is the AD database held? What other folders are related to AD?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista)

The Active Directory Database is Stored in %SYSTEM ROOT%\NDTS folder. Main database file for active directory is ntds.dit. Along with this file there are other files also present in this folder. These files are created when you run dcpromo. These are the main files controlling the AD structure
 ntds.dit: This is the main database file for active directory.
 edb.log: Transaction performed to ad stored in this file.
 res1.log: Used as reserve space in the case when drive had low space.
 res2.log: Same as res1.log.
 edb.chk: This file records the transactions committed to ad database.



When a change is made to the Win2K database, triggering a write operation, Win2K records the transaction in the log file (edb.log). Once written to the log file, the change is then written to the AD database. System performance determines how fast the system writes the data to the AD database from the log file. Any time the system is shut down; all transactions are saved to the database.
During the installation of AD, Windows creates two files: res1.log and res2.log. The initial size of each is 10MB. These files are used to ensure that changes can be written to disk should the system run out of free disk space. The checkpoint file (edb.chk) records transactions committed to the AD database (ntds.dit). During shutdown, a "shutdown" statement is written to the edb.chk file. Then, during a reboot, AD determines that all transactions in the edb.log file have been committed to the AD database. If, for some reason, the edb.chk file doesn't exist on reboot or the shutdown statement isn't present, AD will use the edb.log file to update the AD database.
The last file in our list of files to know is the AD database itself, ntds.dit. By default, the file is located in\NTDS, along with the other files we've discussed

3. Can you connect Active Directory to other 3rd-party Directory Services? Name a few options.

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista)

Active Directory is a LDAP compatible directory service and supported by various third party applications like Novell DirXML, and Atlassian Crowd.
Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) is one of the options you can use to act as an intermediary between two directories (including directories used by SAP, Domino, etc).



MIIS manages information by retrieving identity information from the connected data sources and storing the information in the connector space as connector space objects or CSEntry objects. The CSEntry objects are then mapped to entries in the metaverse called metaverse objects or MVEntry objects. This architecture allows data from dissimilar connected data sources to be mapped to the same MVEntry object. All back-end data is stored in Microsoft SQL Server.
Versions
 Zoomit Via (pre 1999)
 Microsoft Metadirectory Server [MMS] (1999–2003)
 Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 Enterprise Edition [MIIS] (2003-2009)
 Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 Feature Pack [IIFP] (2003-2009)
 Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager Server 2007 ILM (2007-2010)
 Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 FIM [CR0] (Current)

Supported Data Sources
MIIS 2003, Enterprise Edition, includes support for a wide variety of identity repositories including the following.
 Network operating systems and directory services: Microsoft Windows NT, Active Directory, Active Directory Application Mode, IBM Directory Server, Novell eDirectory, Resource Access Control Facility (RACF), SunONE/iPlanet Directory, X.500 systems and other network directory products
 E-mail: Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange 5.5, 2000, 2003, 2007
 Application: PeopleSoft, SAP AG products, ERP1, telephone switches PBX, XML- and Directory Service Markup Language DSML-based systems
 Database: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle RDBMS, IBM Informix, dBase, IBM DB2
 File-based: DSMLv2, LDIF, Comma-separated values CSV, delimited, fixed width, attribute value pairs

Yes. Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) is used to connect Active Directory to other 3rd-party Directory Services (including directories used by SAP, Domino, etc).

Yes We can Connect, by using dirxml and LDAP