What is Active Directory
Active Directory is a directory service developed by Microsoft which can be used as a distributed database that stores the information about all company computers and employees; and a network administration tool that allows company administrators to assign group policies, deploy programs across the network and apply critical updates to all computers or groups of computers from the central server.
Active Directory uses equal domain controllers that automatically replicate the information from each other to distribute it across the network and prevent critical data loss. A major advantage of Active Directory is that the administrator can configure and administrate users’ computers from the central server and there is no need to configure each computer separately.
As a distributed database, Active Directory stores the information about company computers, employees, and connected devices such as printers.
Who uses Active Directory
Active Directory has become popular with middle-sized and large-sized organization because it allows administrating large networks using the DNS structure similar to that of the Internet.
Active Directory Backup
Although Active Directory allows replication of data across servers, the replication option cannot be viewed as a reliable backup tool.
To start with, the data stored on the servers can be lost as a result of natural disasters such as flood, fire or a hurricane which can damage all company servers.
Human error is another thing which can prevent the system from proper function. If the administrator made a mistake while creating group policies or deploying enterprise services, this mistake will be replicated on the rest of the servers, thus replication will only deteriorate the situation rather than improve it.
Still another case when a third party backup tool such as Handy Backup can be applied is a company merger. In this case you can back up the entire Active Directory system of the purchased company and restore it on your company network using your company domains.
In addition, with Handy Backup, Active Directory data can be backed up to virtually any known storage device including CD, DVD, FTP, SFTP, and online, and not just another Active Directory server.
Having considered all the arguments mentioned above, we made a decision to extend Handy Backup’s functionality with the Active Directory backup feature. The development is now under way so visit our website regularly not to miss its release!
With Handy Backup you will back up Active Directory safely and hassle free!
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