When extending an Active Directory to Azure, I
stupidly forgot to install the Active Directory Database and Logs on to a
dedicated Azure data disk. All of the Active Directory documentation that
relates to Azure recommends doing this for integrity purposes
The AD was installed and configured, so I had to
gracefully move the DB and Logs files from there default locations. If you have
not already installed Active Directory on your Azure VM's, simply change the
installation location when you are going through the wizard.
To create a new data disk in Azure for your VM,
click the VM in the Preview Portal, and click All Settings.
Click on Disks.
Click the Attach
New icon.
Select a Storage
Container in which to provision the data disk into, label the disk
something descriptive and also set a size. You should probably do some
investigation into how big your Active Directory database is before you do
this.
Its important Host Caching is set to none. Click Create.
Once the operation to create an attach the new
data disk is complete, use Disk
Management (or diskpart) to
online, initialize and format the disk. Please note, as the Active Directory
database requires some special permissions, the disk must be formatted in NTFS.
On a Domain Controller open an Administrative
Command Prompt. The following command will stop the AD DS service, please hit Y
to confirm that the AD DS service can be stopped along with the other dependent
services.
net stop ntds
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The following commands (and sub-commands of
NTDSUTIL) should move your AD database and logs without any problems. You do
not have to pre-create the folder on the new disk.
ntdsutil
activate instance ntds
file
move db to E:\NTDS
move logs to E:\NTDS
integrity
quit
shutdown –r –t 1 (optional)
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After the reboot the AD files should now be
re-homed.
