There is no right way or wrong way to deploy Microsoft Active Directory. Over the years however, we have found that for each organization there is usually an optimal way.
There are many options available in an Active Directory deployment and there are important implications in regard to different design and migration decisions. Choices regarding the method of populating Active Directory with user accounts can limit or even dictate the available options for co-existence, integration with legacy infrastructure or data migration at later stages in the project. Cheddon Consulting can provide clear and concise design considerations for each aspect of the logical and physical aspects of Active Directory design, as well as an overview of the implications and recommendations for the various migration scenarios.
Active Directory provides a single point of administration for core services such as authentication, file storage or network printing as well as infrastructure services that largely remain transparent to the user community such as WINS, DHCP and DNS. It can also provide enhanced functionality to the IT department such as software deployment via Group Policy, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and Distributed File System (DFS).
It is important to ensure that any initial design allows for future flexibility, both in terms of corporate organisational changes and technical capabilities.
Organisation changes may be brought about by internal restructuring, acquisitions or mergers and can be the source of substantial cost overheads if the corporate directory service is not designed with future flexibility in mind.
Future technical requirements may include provision for home working or remote access to the corporate network for mobile staff, both of which could be delivered from a properly designed Active Directory environment.
While it’s not always the case, very often Active Directory deployment and Microsoft Exchange migration go hand in hand. At a minimum, upgrading to any version of Exchange after 5.5 requires Microsoft Active Directory.
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