How to Do an Offline Defragmentation of Active Directory in Windows Server 2008 R2

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This last week I received an interesting question via email.

"I occasionally do offline defragmentation of Active Directory of my Windows server 2003 and 2008 boxes, the process is painful with the shut downs and restarts. Do you really need to do Offline Defrag? How do you do an offline defragmentation of the Active Directory database in Windows Server 2008 R2? I hear the process has improved."

I guess that's really more than one question, however they are all centered around a single topic.  In short the process for offline defragmentation has improved dramatically in Windows Server 2008 R2.  I made a short (5 minutes) video talking about why we defragment AD, and showing exactly how it is done. 

 

Click the monitor to watch the video

Dell Monitor

For those of you who would like the documentation you can find the Offline Defragmentation for Windows Server 2008 here.   https://support.microsoft.com/kb/232122/ 

I assume we will see something specific to R2 here shortly.