Windows® 2000 Active Directory™

Central Versus Distributed Administration

Centralized administration and distributed administration have long been the debate amongst LAN and email administrators. Centralized administration provides for greater control and consistency. This is important from an operational standpoint. Historically, systems that were tightly held provided a reliable and stable environment. Unfortunately, the tightly held systems also reduced the responsiveness that the more distributed systems provided. Whether it was a password change or a logon script modification, having the capability to get this done locally, or at least in the same time zone, provided greater responsiveness.

In addition to responsiveness, distributed administration provided a forum ...