AD Hierarchy Limit

[evz]

Hello,

Does anyone know what the advised limit of OU's/Containers is in Active Directory. I have a feeling someone has told me something about 3 or 4, but does anyone know the correct answer and also why there is an advised number of levels (something to do with time it takes to apply policies when logging on ??)

thanks

 

[pgoss]

Couple of things on this one, you can bury as many OU's as you want; best practice says use as few as possible. Basically make the OU structure logical to your business. Whatever makes sense, etc...

As for the taking longer to login, it all depends on how many GPO's you apply. If you only apply the default domain policy and you have that user down 8 OU's, he still is only applying 1 GPO, so login time shouldn't take that long. On the other hand, using the same user, you apply GPO's at every level, then it will take a while to log in because the system has to process 8 different OU's.

 

[gwinn7]

3-4 is what is mentioned in the documentation that you should not exceed for practical reasons, not limitations of the system. That was probably what your source was meaning.

Gary
A+,L+,N+,I+
gwinn7