Summary

Understanding the business requirements and the current implementation will be the foundation upon which you build the rest of the Active Directory design. Although this may not be the most exciting part of the design process, it very well could be the most important. Be prepared to document everything you find within the existing environment, for it will all come in very handy as you move on to the other phases of the design.

Interviewing the stakeholders will allow you to glean some very important information for the design. You will learn why the new design is being called for as well as where the company s priorities lie. Later, as the design process moves on, and even later, as the planning process is undertaken, if there are tradeoffs that need to be considered , you can determine what takes precedence based on the priorities of the company.

Analyze the current administrative responsibilities for every resource within the organization. You will use this information to determine who is responsible for the resource as well as a starting point from which you can decide where consolidation of administration can occur. Later, you will review this information to determine if you can consolidate the administrative control and where you need to delegate administrative control.

The following chapter concentrates on designing the Active Directory forest structure. Using some of the data that was gathered from this chapter, you will be able to make decisions concerning the forest design you want to implement. Later, in subsequent chapters, you will continue to look back at the data gathered at this step in your process so that you can build the most efficient infrastructure based on the organization s needs.