Windows Server® 2012 Unleashed

Describing Forests in AD DS

Forests are a group of interconnected domain trees. Implicit trusts connect the roots of each tree together into a common forest.

The overlying characteristics that tie together all domains and domain trees into a common forest are the existence of a common schema and a common global catalog. However, domains and domain trees in a forest do not need to share a common namespace. For example, the domains microsoft.internal and technet.internal could theoretically be part of the same forest but maintain their own separate namespaces.

Forests are the main organizational security boundary for AD DS, and it is assumed that all domain administrators within a forest are trusted to some degree. If a domain administrator is ...