Windows® 2000 Active Directory™

Physical versus Logical Structure

The logical structure of Active Directory design is represented by the domains, their relationships with one another, along with the organizational units (OUs). These relationships are represented in domain and OU topologies, as seen in Figure 10.1

Figure 10.1. A domain tree with parent and child domains.

Sites represent the physical network within Active Directory. DCs communicating within a site behave differently than DCs communicating across sites. Furthermore, because we want clients to communicate with DCs located on the network near them, clients are also site aware.

The network topology and the ...