A logical divider for organization information in Active Directory in Microsoft Windows 2000. Partitions divide Active Directory into separate sections and enable it to store large numbers of objects in a distributed directory over the network.
They also allow Active Directory to scale millions of objects. A partition functions as a physical storage container for a portion of the directory data for an organization. Each domain’s directory information is stored in a separate partition and is identified using the distinguished name of the domain.
The global catalog server can find an object in Active Directory by using the object’s distinguished name, which can be used to identify a replica of a partition that contains the object.