Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services

Option 2: Multiple Forests

The following requirements will dictate a design with multiple forests:

• Multiple schemas. Everything in the forest shares a common schema. Conflicts between applications or administration of the schema can introduce the need for an additional forest.

• Resource forests. Some organizations may require multiple forests for isolation reasons, but need to share a common resource, for example Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 and later. A separate forest can be created to host the shared resources, and forest-level trusts can be used to provide the authentication and authorization paths. A test environment could be created as a resource forest.

• Forest administrator distrust. Some organizations have an internal structure that ...