Analyzing the Existing Administrative Structure


When approaching the discovery phase of the Active Directory and network infrastructure design, you need to determine what type of administrative structure the company is using. Looking back at the previous sections of this chapter, you have seen the different types of administration and business models. Each of them dictates how your design will be formulated. You can ask several questions of the organization to determine how the company is administered:

Resource Location     Where are the resources located? Why are the resources located in these areas? Are there security considerations involved in why they are located here? Are there communication issues, Wide Area Network (WAN) links, unreliable connections?

Administrative Staff     Where is the administrative staff located? Who is responsible for what resources? What level of administrative control does each administrator have? Should those administrators continue to administer the resources?

Growth Considerations     Does the existing structure allow for growth within the company? Does the existing structure allow for easy and efficient acquisitions and mergers?

The results of these questions will reinforce the administration model that is being implemented. Often you will find that the administration model that the company thought they were working with is not truly what they have currently implemented. As companies go through their lifecycle, they tend to take on an administrative model that fits the needs of the company, even though that may not be the administrative structure that was initially put into place. This is most typically seen in centralized companies.

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Real World Scenario ”The Morphing Administrative Model

Kinnet Company is a small company that prints custom maps for townships and villages. For years the company had all of its resources, servers, printers, and workstations in an office in one of Chicago s western suburbs. In the early 1990s, the company decided that they would open a location outside of Reno, Nevada. This remote site could better serve West Coast customers.

Most of the administration was performed from the home office. The administrators could perform most of their administrative tasks using MMC snap-ins. But for those tasks that could not be performed using the MMC, Terminal Services was used to connect to the servers and remotely administer them.

Nearly six months after the office was opened, the company decided that having one administrator on site at the Reno office was justified. This administrator would be responsible for system backups and any troubleshooting that could not be performed from the home office. The administrator in the Reno office was not given as many rights as the administrators at the home office, but could perform the functions that the other administrators deemed necessary.

When the design team started documenting the network for a Windows Server 2003 migration, they talked with the administrators, and were told that they had a centralized administration model with decentralized resources. After the design team documented the resources and the resource administration, they returned to the administrative staff and informed them that they were using a decentralized administrative model, due to the fact that the administrator in Reno had specific functions and was responsible for the systems at the remote site.

Make sure the questions you ask are open ended enough so that you can analyze them and possibly discover discrepancies with what the company thinks they are doing.

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Sometimes the need for restructuring will become evident once the review of the existing structure is questioned. An outdated design could be as inefficient as a poor design. Trying to change an existing organization could be difficult, because many people are opposed to change. Reassigning job responsibilities may not go over well. Make sure you have the backing from key personnel, or know the power hierarchy within the company so that you can get the approval you need. Just remember, when you are aligning your allies , make sure you determine who the enemies are. You will always encounter those within an organization who are reluctant to change. Make sure you know who would like to see the project fail.

Interviewing key stakeholders within the organization will also yield valuable insight as to how the administration of the resources needs to be addressed. A stakeholder is anyone who is responsible for, or needs access to, a resource. Because they need to have the resource available to perform the duties for which they are responsible, you need to find out all you can about the resource. You will often find out more about the way a resource is used from those individuals who access it during their normal daily routines, but you should also talk with the administrators of the resource. Document your findings, but make sure that the information you are disseminating does not consume too much of your time. Especially in large organizations, you may need to determine who has high-level control of the resources and then break down the delegation of control when you plan the rollout of the design.

When reviewing the existing administrative infrastructure, you may want to put together a matrix containing the resources and the administrative staff that is responsible for those resources, as well as the users who need to access the resource and the level of access they need. Again, as with determining the administrative access, you may not be able to completely document every item within the organization, especially large organizations, but make sure that you know who the main groups are that need access.

Note  

A sample matrix can be found later in this chapter under the section Designing the Administrative Structure.

Later, in Chapter 3, Designing the Active Directory Forest Structure and Chapter 4, Designing the Active Directory Domain Structure, as well as Chapter 5, Designing an Organizational Unit Structure for Administrative Purposes, and Chapter 6, Designing a Group Policy Infrastructure, we will look at the forest, domain, organizational unit, and site design. Within these chapters we will look at creating the documentation that specifies the administrative control and access requirements of the resource. These documents will assist you when you are designing these structures. Having the simplest design will allow us to efficiently administer the resources.




MCSE
MCSE: Windows Server 2003 Active Directory and Network Infrastructure Design Study Guide (70-297)
ISBN: 0782143210
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 159
Authors: Brad Price, Sybex

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