Designing the Active Directory Structure

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server includes a directory service called Active Directory™. The Active Directory concepts, architectural elements, and features presented in this chapter will help the IT architect and strategic planner in your organization to produce design documents essential to a successful Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Active Directory deployment.

Prior to reading this chapter, it is important that you obtain detailed knowledge of the IT administration groups, administrative hierarchy, and network topology in your organization. This knowledge will help you apply the planning guidelines in this chapter to your own unique environment.

In This Chapter

Overview of Active Directory

Planning for Active Directory

Creating a Forest Plan

Creating a Domain Plan

Creating an Organizational Unit Plan

Creating a Site Topology Plan

Planning Task List for Designing the Active Directory Structure

Chapter Goals

This chapter will help you develop the following planning documents:

Forest Plan
Domain Plan for each forest
Organizational Unit (OU) Plan for each domain
Site Topology Plan for each forest

Related Information in the Resource Kit

For more information about migrating domains to Windows 2000, see "Determining Domain Migration Strategies" in this book.
For more information about Windows 2000 security standards, such as the Kerberos protocol, see "Planning Distributed Security" in this book.
For more information about advanced networking, see "Determining Network Connectivity Strategies" in this book.
For more information about Microsoft® IntelliMirror™ or Group Policy, see "Applying Change and Configuration Management" in this book.
For more technical information about Active Directory, see the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Resource Kit Distributed Systems Guide.
For more information about Domain Name System (DNS), see "Introduction to DNS" and "Windows 2000 DNS" in the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Resource Kit TCP/IP Core Networking Guide.