Active Directory Design and Security Concepts - MCTS Guide to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Configuration - page 114

Now look at a larger organization with departments in different locations. If the com-
pany uses department rather than location for identification purposes, the OU structure
could reflect that focus, as shown on the left in Figure 4-2. The top-level structure remains
intact, but under each department is an OU for each location. Conversely, if the business is
organized mainly by location, the OU structure looks like the one on the right in Figure 4-2.
Notice that some OUs have the same name, which is allowed as long as they are in different
parts of the Active Directory hierarchy. For example, the R&D OU is under both the Boston
and Seattle OUs.

There are other approaches to OU hierarchy design. For example, a cur-
rent trend is designing OUs based on grouping users and resources
according to their security levels.

Fakebusiness.com Fakebusiness.com

Administration Boston

Marketing

Marketing

R&D

Boston

Seattle

Seattle

Marketing

R&D

R&D

Boston

SanDiego

SanDiego

Administration

Operations Operations

OUs structured by
department

OUs structured by
location

Figure 4-2 A multilocation domain organized by department and location