Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the administrative structure of a company. The administrative structure can be divided into two categories: the business model and the administration model. The business model will fall into one of four categories:

Real World Scenario ”Central State Regional Board of Education

For many years the school systems that composed the Central State Regional Board of Education district were autonomous units that were able to purchase and implement any network infrastructure that they deemed necessary for their individual school system. As long as they were able to work within their budget, the RBE did not interfere. However, over the past three years support costs have been increasing due to the age of the systems and the diverse operating systems that exist throughout the district .

The decision had been made to consolidate the services under one operating system, Windows Server 2003, and a specific group of applications. Each of the schools was presented with this list. The school systems would still retain their own administrative staff and would be autonomous from the rest of the RBE school systems. After the initial political fights dissipated, the design of the new Active Directory and network infrastructure started. Because all of the schools would retain their own administrative staff but the RBE would have control over the Active Directory forest, it was decided that a hybrid model would be employed. Due to the fact that there were no special requirements for any of the school systems that would require a domain for that school, an OU structure was designed to allow the schools to have control over their resources delegated to them.

 

• Departmental

• Project-based

• Product/service-based

• Cost center

The administrative model will fall within the four categories:

• Centralized

• Decentralized

• Hybrid

• Outsourced

Developing an efficient Active Directory and network infrastructure design is dependent upon identifying the resources that need to be administered and the groups responsible for administering them. Once this information has been identified, the Active Directory and network infrastructure design will be mainly based upon the administrative requirements. Because Active Directory is a flexible tool, centralized or decentralized control can be easily built into its design.

Within the pages of the next chapter we will discuss the business requirements and how they affect the design. Although some of the information will carry over from this chapter to the next , this is all vital information that will help determine an efficient design for Active Directory.