Active Directory Domain Services Server 2016 Important folders and files

When you configure Active Directory Domain Services, you will be prompted for the above information.

The database folder whose default path is C:\windows\NTDS contains the NTDS.DIT file. DIT stands for Directory Information Technology.

The NTDS.dit file contains almost all information of Active Directory except Group policies. Group policies are stored in the SYSVOL folder

The EDB.log file is known as the transaction log file, any changes you make to Active Directory for example creating users, ou etc. are first written in the transaction log file and whenever CPU resources are available it will then write to the NTDS.DIT file.

EDBXXXX.log – In a situation that the main transaction log gets full then a new transaction log file is created with a sequential number. If there are multiple changes pending to your domain controller then you will see more of these files. (These files are not shown in the diagram above, so obviously not many changes have happened)

EDB.chk – This file is used to identify which updates (from the log files) have be written to the database and which ones are pending, in the case of an abnormal restart , Active Directory will use the checkpoint file and correctly write the pending changes to the database.