Summary

This chapter has touched on many of the important design decisions that must be made to build a stable and scalable Active Directory. It has shown that companies have multiple options available to them and it has shown the importance of keeping the design as simple as possible. Each variation on the design offers additional flexibility but always at a cost of complexity. Complexity equals added management which increases cost of ownership. You must carefully weigh the costs of a design before embarking on a design that might prove difficult to manage.

You've seen that Windows 2003 has further improved in the area of Active Directory in terms of replication, security, and interoperability with foreign forests. These improvements make more complex designs more scalable and easier to support.

This chapter has touched on the benefits of Microsoft Identity Information Server and how it is able to tie multiple directories together to allow companies to better leverage their data stores. New capabilities such as renaming domain controllers without demotion and renaming a domain give you powerful new tools for the management and rearchitecting of existing forests and domains.

You've also seen that the old philosophy of placing domain controllers at every location just isn't necessary anymore. Often times, investing the budget in WAN connectivity and redundancy will pay larger dividends .

Careful planning of the Active Directory is the easiest way to avoid problems down the road. A well thought out Active Directory is easy to scale and is flexible enough to accept change. Always take the opportunity to design a network the right way the first time. Be flexible in allowing changes but only if they meet a legitimate business need. Never let a change go undocumented. The original design should be a living document that captures the current state of the enterprise. As a map, it will be invaluable in assisting with any troubleshooting that might occur in the future.