Directory Infrastructure for Service Publication

The objects stored in Active Directory are arranged in a hierarchy. Active Directory is shipped with a pre-configured hierarchy that contains the information required to install and run Windows 2000 and the directory service itself. The default structure includes containers intended specifically for use in service publication.

Active Directory has a default structure. Figure 5.1 illustrates this structure.

Figure 5.1 Default Active Directory Structure for Service Publication

The domain hierarchy stores all of the objects (for example, users, computers, and printers) related to a particular domain, and it is replicated to all domain controllers for that domain. The configuration hierarchy stores all of the objects related to a complete forest of domains. The configuration hierarchy is replicated to every domain controller in the forest of domains. The Services container and Sites container are immediate children of the configuration directory partition.