Compacting the NTDS Database NTDS.DIT

Compacting the AD DS database NTDS.DIT improves performance. The improvement varies depending on amount of changes to the database.

Stop "Active Directory Domain Services" (also stops the services below)
-File Replication Service
-Kerberos Key Distribution Center
-Intersite Messaging
-DNS Server


ntdsutil
ntdsutil: activate instance ntds
Active instance set to "ntds".
ntdsutil: files
Service "NTDS" is running. Stop the service before binding to this Active Direct
ory database.
ntdsutil: files
file maintenance: compact to c:\temp
Initiating DEFRAGMENTATION mode...
Source Database: C:\Windows\NTDS\ntds.dit
Target Database: c:\temp\ntds.dit
Defragmentation Status (% complete)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
...................................................
It is recommended that you immediately perform a full backup
of this database. If you restore a backup made before the
defragmentation, the database will be rolled back to the state
it was in at the time of that backup.
Compaction is successful. You need to:
copy "c:\temp\ntds.dit" "C:\Windows\NTDS\ntds.dit"
and delete the old log files:
del C:\Windows\NTDS\*.log
quit
quit



copy "c:\temp\ntds.dit" "C:\Windows\NTDS\ntds.dit"
del C:\Windows\NTDS\*.log





ntdsutil
ntdsutil: activate instance ntds
Active instance set to "ntds".
ntdsutil: files
Service "NTDS" is running. Stop the service before binding to this Active Direct
ory database.
ntdsutil: files
file maintenance: help
? - Show this help information
Checkpoint - Dump Jet checkpoint file
Checksum - Perform Jet physical integrity check
Compact to %s - Compact DB to specified directory
Dump page %d - Dump Jet db %d page number
Header - Dump the Jet database header
Help - Show this help information
Info - Return information about DS files
Integrity - Perform Jet logical integrity check
Logfile %s - Dump Jet log file %s. %s could be absolute
path or just the log file name in log dir.
Metadata - Dump Jet db metadata
Move DB to %s - Move DB to specified directory
Move logs to %s - Move log files to specified directory
Quit - Return to the prior menu
Recover - Perform soft database recovery
Set backup exclusion key - Set backup exclusion key for the AD DS/LDS.
Set default folder security - Reset security on NTDS folders to default
values
Set path backup %s - Set online backup directory path
Set path DB %s - Set DB file path
Set path logs %s - Set logging directory path
Set path working dir %s - Set AD DS/LDS working directory path
Space usage - Dump Jet db space usage