Active Directory® Sites and Services is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in in the Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system that you can use to administer the replication of directory data among all sites in an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) forest. This snap-in also provides a view of the service-specific objects that are published in AD DS.

Note

You can also use Active Directory Sites and Services to administer the replication of directory data among all sites in an Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) configuration set.

Administrators who are responsible for forest-wide service administration can use Active Directory Sites and Services to manage the intersite replication topology for the forest. Administrators who are responsible for application services can be delegated responsibility for the service containers into which application-specific objects are published.

When you add the Active Directory Domain Services server role to a server, Active Directory Sites and Services is added to the Administrative Tools menu.