Creating a Forest Change Control Policy

Each forest you create should have an associated Forest Change Control Policy as part of your Forest Plan document. You will use this policy to guide changes that have forest-wide impact. You do not need to determine the individual processes before continuing, but understanding their ownership is important. The policy should include information about each of the shared elements in a forest.

Schema Change Policy

The schema administrators group has full control over the schema for a forest. The schema change policy should include:

• The name of the team in your organization that controls the schema administrators group.
• The starting membership of the schema administrators group.
• Guidelines and a process for requesting and evaluating schema changes.

For more information about Active Directory schema, see the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Resource Kit Distributed Systems Guide.

Configuration Change Policy

The enterprise administrators group has full control over the Configuration container that is replicated throughout the forest. The configuration change policy should include:

• The name of the team in your organization that controls the enterprise administrators group.
• The starting membership of the enterprise administrators group.
• Guidelines and a process for creating new domains in the forest.
• Guidelines and a process for modifying the forest site topology. (Site topology is discussed in "Creating a Site Topology Plan" later in this chapter.)

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