In Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), the Certification Authority database is implemented as a local CA-specific database. This limits the options for distributing or consolidating CA operations across multiple active instances.
Traditional AD CS clustering does not provide active-active database replication for the CA database. As a result, high-availability architectures generally rely on failover concepts rather than multiple CA nodes operating simultaneously against a replicated CA database.
Modern PKI solutions can provide more flexible high-availability architectures, including database replication and clustered deployment models. These capabilities can help maintain PKI availability even when individual components fail.
By using a modern PKI platform, companies can improve the availability and resilience of their certificate services.