Linux® and Windows® Interoperability Guide

Strengths and Weaknesses of Active Directory Domains

What are some of the problems that Windows domains solve? We will go into a number of issues that describe how the features of the Microsoft domain model can make life easier for systems administrators.

The first area is the scalability of the domain. Windows NT 4.0 supported a single-domain model. If the domain grew larger than about 10,000 accounts, it became sluggish in performance. Once that happens, administrators establish a second domain and connect it to the first with bidirectional trust relationships. As more domains are added, more bidirectional trust relationships are needed, ultimately becoming unmanageable at around five to six domains. The reason is that the number of bidirectional ...