Additional Costs of Deploying Multiple Forests

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

The most significant disadvantage to deploying multiple forests is the added costs involved with providing additional teams and training for multiple deployments, as well as additional configuration. When you deploy multiple forests as opposed to a single forest, additional costs include:

  • Design: Different teams need to design their individual forest, which requires the cost of educating additional IT professionals and the cost of their time invested in the design process itself.

  • Implementation: Different teams need to deploy, monitor, and operate a separate forest, which requires the cost of training more IT professionals and the cost of their time invested in these activities.

  • Collaboration across forests: Extra cost might be associated with collaborating on the configuration and monitoring of the additional features that are not required for a single-forest deployment, including:

    • Collaboration between forest administrators and possibly domain administrators.

    • Additional software and hardware.

  • Training for additional configuration requirements.

  • The actual configuration of the specific features that are required to implement single-forest functionality across forests.

If deploying multiple forests is an option rather than a requirement, then prior to deployment you must be sure that the advantages of service autonomy, service isolation, or data isolation outweigh these additional costs.