Chapter 16 - Working with Global Catalog Servers and Schema

Abstract

The chapter focuses on the Global Catalog (GC) and Global Catalog (GC) servers. It also emphasizes the Active Directory schema. Active Directory uses the GC that is a copy of all the Active Directory objects in a forest, to let users search for directory information across all the domains in the forest. The GC is also used to resolve user principal names (UPNs) when the domain controller (DC), that is, authenticating logon is not aware of the account (because that account resides in a different domain). When the DC cannot find the user's account in its own domain database, it looks in the GC. The GC also stores information about membership in Universal Groups. GC servers are important for the UPN functionality of Active Directory. Universal Groups are also a responsibility of the GC server. The key point is that the GC is designed to have the details that are most commonly used for searching information. This allows for efficient response from a GC server. There is no need to try to find one item out of millions of attributes because the GC has important search-related items only. This makes for quick turnaround on queries.