Naming Contexts and Partitions

For replication purposes, an Active Directory forest has a number of directory partitions (also called naming contexts). A directory partition is a contiguous Active Directory subtree that is replicated on one or more Windows 2000 domain controllers (DCs) in a forest.

Each DC has a replica of three directory partitions:

• The schema partition, which contains the classSchema and attributeSchema objects that define the types of objects that can exist in the Active Directory forest. Every DC in the forest has a replica of the same schema partition.
• The configuration partition, which contains replication topology and other configuration information that must be replicated throughout the forest. Every DC in the forest has a replica of the same configuration partition.
• A domain partition, which contains the objects, such as users and computers, associated with the local domain. A domain can have multiple DCs; a forest can have multiple domains. Each DC stores a full replica of the domain partition for its local domain, but does not store replicas of the domain partitions for other domains.

Note that a Global Catalog contains partial replicas of the all the objects from every partition in a forest.

For more information about how Active Directory maintains consistency between the various replicas of a directory partition, see Replication and Data Integrity.