Tuesday, July 5, 2011

What is the difference between Active Directory Forest and Domain?

Active Directory Forest and Active Directory Domain Explained.

Forest: Forest is the top level container of Active Directory infrastructure. A forest can consist of one or more domains and those domains are connected through transitive trust. A forest shares a single schema database, single Exchange organization, single global address list and a security boundary. Note: You may allow access to resources of only those in the same forest. You may want multiple forest if you need:

- more than one Exchange organization

- different forest functional levels

- separate security boundary

Domain: Domain is one level below Active Directory Forest. A domain can consist of one or more organization unit. A domain shares a single administrator group (Domain Admins security group) and same set of objects. Even when a domain shares a single administrator group, you may delegate control over each organization unit (OU).

Domain controller: Every domain consists of one or more domain controllers. Domain controller holds a directory database of its perspective domain. The directory database consists of user objects, computer objects and much more.

Organization unit (OU) is folder/container within a domain. OU can be used to organize set of computers or users. OUs are very useful when implementing different set of polices to a group of users or computers within a domain.

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