A Forest Of Trees

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The forest functional level provides a way to enable forestwide Active Directory features within your TS windows vista environment. Three forest functional levels are available: Windows 2000 (default), Windows Server 2003 interim, and Windows Server 2003. The Windows 2000 functional level allows a Windows Server 2003 domain controller to interact with domain controllers in the domain running Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, or Windows Server 2003. The Windows Server 2003 interim functional level allows a Windows Server 2003 domain controller to interact with domain control?lers in the domain running Windows NT 4 or Windows Server 2003. The Windows Server 2003 functional level allows a Windows Server 2003 domain controller to interact only with domain controllers in the domain running Windows Server 2003. You can raise the functional level of a forest only if the domain controllers in the forest are running the appropriate version of Windows. See Chapter 3, "Administering Active Directory," for details about raising forest functional levels.
As an administrator, you must create a forest ...
... structure to reflect your company's organization. See 70-620 practice test, "Planning the Active Directory Infrastructure Design," to learn the basics of forest design. See Chapter 4, "Installing and Managing Domains, Trees, and Forests," for details about creating forests.

The physical components of Active Directory are sites and domain controllers. As an administrator, you use these components to develop a directoiy structure that mirrors the physical structure of your organization.
A site is a combination of one or more IP subnets connected by a highly reliable and fast link to localize as much network traffic as possible. Typically, a site has the same boundaries as a local area network (LAN). When you group subnets on your network, you should combine only subnets that have fast, cheap, and reliable network connections with one another. "Fast" network connections are at least 512 kilobits per second (Kbps). An available bandwidth (the average amount of bandwidth that is available for use after normal network traffic is handled) of 128 Kbps and higher is sufficient for a site.

With Active Directory, sites are not part of the namespace. When you browse the logical namespace, you see computers and users grouped into domains and OUs, not sites. Sites contain only computer objects and connection objects used to configure replication between sites. As shown in Figure 1-8, a single domain can span one or more geographical sites, and a single site can include free Microsoft practice exam questions user accounts and computers belonging to multiple domains.