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What is Active Directory

Active Directory (AD) is a directory service that Microsoft developed for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Active Directory is a database that keeps track of all the user accounts and passwords in your organization. It allows you to store your user accounts and passwords in one protected location, improving your organization's security. Active Directory is subdivided into one or more domains

By simple meaning, Active Directory is a centralize repository of Objects. Everything like User, Group, Service, Resources etc, is an object for Active Directory. Active Directory is simply a collection of all these resources.

When we put all these object together under a logical grouping or boundary including network resources to construct Active Directory is know as Domain.


A single/ multiple Domains in contiguous namespace together construct a Tree and  single/ multiple Trees with a transitive trust hierarchy together construct a Forest. 

True...! What if we have only one Active Directory Domain? Where is this Tree or Forest?

Yes, We do have Forest and Tree into the picture. 

Forest and Tree both is a logical boundary which expands according to it's objects. 

For example we have a domain "parent.com". Now this is a Tree with single domain. We build a new domain into our existing domain, it will use parent domain's name space. It will look like "child.parent.com". now this Tree expends automatically and looks in proper shape. It will grow as we will add new child domains like "child01.parent.com, child02.parent.com" so on. 

Now we are adding a new domain "newparent.com" with it's child domains "child01.newparent.com", "child02.newparent.com", which is sharing same Schema and Linked with a Transitive Trust. We can say this is a new tree in our Forest. Basically Forest is the outer most boundary of Active Directory and it grow automatically with growth of Trees and Domain.


As per Microsoft, A Domain  is defined as a logical group of network objects (Computer, Users, Devices) that share the same Active Directory database. A Tree is a collection of one or more Domains and Domain Trees in a contiguous namespace, linked in a transitive trust hierarchy. At the top of the structure is the forest.


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