In my opinion, the benefit to going with a dedicated forest root is recoverability. You will have a domain that you are doing most of your management. All of your user accounts, groups, computers and everything will be in that domain. If something goes wrong, you don't have to worry about blowing the entire forest away and starting from scratch.
In addition, you can keep the FSMO roles, and the Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins separate from the influence of standard domain administrators. In some of the environments I've been involved in, the domain admins tend to be renegade cowboys and don't think about what they do. They just do it. This allows you to keep control over those groups and roles away from them. The main reason smaller companies don't go with the dedicated forest root is budget. It requires its own domain controllers and of course, you need to provide redundancy. I recommend going with the dedicated forest root whenever possible, but the almighty dollar that the clients have to answer to often prevents it. Hope this helps. Marc Zukerman Senior Network Engineer Greenwich Technology Partners ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clifford Airhart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 8:00 PM Subject: [ActiveDir] Empty root domain benefits? > Hello Everyone, > > The simplest domain model is the Single Forest / Single Domain. I > was thinking of using this model with an "empty" root domain? Does anyone > have any experience with "empty" root domain? Is it really beneficial? We > are only a small company with a few hundred users and have 4 domains in a > multimaster NT domain model. > > What are the pros and cons? > > Thanks, > > Cliff Airhart > Answer Financial Inc. > Senior Systems Administrator - Server Support / eBusiness > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 818.644.4225 > We answer to you. > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
