Directory Database Mounting AD 2008

Directory Database Mounting is one of the new cool futures active directory windows 2008, being able to take snapshot and using it with LDAP tool, such ADUC and looking into offline read only .DIT database.

How cool is that can you imagine. We will do this right now right here together. Why in the world we would ever need to do this Anyway, Imagine you are going to perform security audit and you capture the state of active directory .dit READ ONLY database and you will work on it.

You don't want helpdesk or domain admins to make changes while you are auditing .dit database or you will export Active directory information and wish to plan or design active directory OU structure and so on Whatever reason you have, you will learn how to do this in just seconds and you will see how easy this will be.

What toll or tools we are going to use to accomplish the mission here? We will use build in AD tools such as

• Ntdsutil
  
• Dsamain.exe
  

STEP BY STEP

Log onto ADDS Server windows 2008

Click on Start go to run , and type the following

• Ntdsutil
  
• Snapshot
  
• activate instance ntds
  
• create (uses volume shadow copy)
  
• mount {GUID}
  
• list mounted ( will list the snapshot )
  
• dsamain /dbpath <path_to_database_file> /ldapport <port_#>
  
• dsamain -dbpath C:\$SNAP_200810160916_VOLUMEC$\Windows\NTDS\ntds.dit -LdapPort 10000
  

• The video will show you how to accomplish this step by step. This is my first video and I do appreciate any feed back if you find it useful and like it or not would be appreciated
  

--Oz Ozugurlu

MVP (Exchange) MCITP (EMA),

MCITP (SA) MCSE 2003, M+, S+,

MCDST, Security+, Project +, Server +

Blog: http://www.smtp25.blogspot.com