Windows® 2000 Active Directory™

When to Use Multiple Domains in a Single Tree

Identifying when to use multiple domains in a single tree, rather than multiple OUs in a single domain, is one of the hardest design decisions. Multiple domains in a tree share many of the same attributes that are shared between multiple OUs in a single domain. There is a shared Active Directory schema, security context, and namespace. So, why would you decide to implement multiple domains instead of implementing multiple OUs in a single domain? To make that decision, it is important to understand the characteristics of a multi-domain tree.

Schema

Multiple domains in a tree share a common schema. This means that the changes to the schema for the Active Directory database are written to ...