What You Should Know Before You Move Forward

When migrating to any new infrastructure you need to understand where you are, where you are going and why you are going there. Before we explain how migration occurs, we will discuss the new concepts and technologies introduced with the Next-generation Directory. This will help you understand how the next generation Directory Services will fit into your environment.

As you read this document you should be thinking about the following issues:

• Where are my users physically located?
• Where are the resources they are using?
• How am I doing administration now?
• How do I want to do administration in the future?
• How should I allow my tree to be formed? Do I form the tree from the top down or do I let the individual groups within my organization form their own sub-trees under a central point?

There are no universal right or wrong answers. The method you choose will depend on your organization's needs and how you plan on supporting this infrastructure in the future.

The key concepts in understanding the next generation Directory Service are:

• the directory data model
• the scaleable namespace
• the site topology