Example: Establishing an Active Directory Deployment Strategy

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

To illustrate the Active Directory deployment process, the chapters in this book show an example of how a fictitious company, Contoso Pharmaceuticals, deploys Active Directory in its environment. The Contoso environment consists of four domains, all of which are running Windows 2000 Active Directory. Figure 1.4 shows the current domain structure for the Contoso corporation.

Figure 1.4   Contoso Corporation Domain Structure

After reviewing its existing environment and identifying its deployment goals, Contoso established the following Active Directory deployment strategy:

• Upgrade Windows 2000 domains to Windows Server 2003 domains.

• Enable advanced Active Directory features by raising the domain and forest functional levels to Windows Server 2003.

After upgrading all Windows 2000 domains to Windows Server 2003 domains, Contoso will restructure the africa.concorp.contoso.com domain within the forest to consolidate it with the emea.concorp.contoso.com domain.

The Contoso corporation is acquiring a company called Trey Research, which is currently running a Windows NT 4.0–based environment, as shown in Figure 1.5.

Figure 1.5   Current Environment for Trey Research

Contoso established the following Active Directory deployment strategy for their Trey Research acquisition:

• Design the Active Directory logical structure to create forest, domain, DNS, and organizational unit designs for the new Windows Server 2003 environment.

• Design the site topology to create the required sites, site links, and site link bridges.

• Plan domain controller capacity to determine the hardware requirements for the new Windows Server 2003 environment.

• Deploy trccorp.treyresearch.net as the forest root domain.

• Deploy three regional domains. Different teams can create these domains simultaneously.

  • Upgrade the EAST domain to Windows Server 2003 to become east.trccorp.treyresearch.net.

  • Create two new Windows Server 2003 regional domains called asia.trccorp.treyresearch.net and west.trccorp.treyresearch.net.

• Restructure the BOSTON, MAIL-APPS, PROD-APPS, and OFFICE-APPS domains to the east.trccorp.treyresearch.net Windows Server 2003 domain by using ADMT.

• Raise the domain and forest functional levels to Windows Server 2003.

Figure 1.6 shows the interim environment for Trey Research.

Figure 1.6   Interim Environment for Trey Research

At a later time, Contoso determined that a single domain would be more cost-effective for the Europe, Middle East, and Asia region, so the final step in the deployment process is to restructure asia.trccorp.treyresearch.net into the emea.concorp.contoso.com domain in the Contoso forest by using ADMT.

Figure 1.7 shows the domain structure for the Contoso corporation after the acquisition of Trey Research and the Windows Server 2003 Active Directory deployment process is complete.

Figure 1.7   Final Environment for Contoso and Trey Research