Restructuring Active Directory Domains Between Forests: Active Directory

Restructuring Active Directory Domains Between Forests

Updated: March 28, 2003

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

Restructuring Active Directory® directory service domains between forests involves relocating objects from source domains in one forest to target domains in another forest. If you are migrating a pilot domain into your production environment, merging with another organization and consolidating the two IT infrastructures, or consolidating resource and account domains that you upgraded in-place from a Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0 operating system environment, then restructuring Active Directory domains between forests enables you to reduce the complexity of your organization and the associated administrative costs. However, if your Active Directory environment consists of multiple forests, you might also move objects between forests on a regular basis.

In This Chapter

Overview of Restructuring Active Directory Domains Between Forests

Restructuring Limitations

Planning to Restructure Active Directory Domains Between Forests

Preparing the Source and Target Domains

Migrating Accounts

Migrating Resources

Completing the Migration

Additional Resources for Retructuring Active Directory Domains Between Forests

Related Information

For more information about the logical structure of Active Directory and about designing a Domain Name System (DNS) for Active Directory, see "Designing the Active Directory Logical Structure" in this book.
For more information about designing the Active Directory site topology, see "Designing the Site Topology" in this book.