Re: AD 2003 - Empty root or Not!

From: Glenn L (the.only_at_gmail.com)
Date: 10/21/04


Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:49:18 -0700

In regards to your enterprise level groups concerns.
The main problem imho is that anyone in the domain administrators group (in
the forest root domain) can elevation their privelegs and add themselves to
the enterprise admins and schema admins groups.
Forest wide operations like sites and subnets, replication topology and
control, DHCP and RIS authorization, Schema mods, etc
There is nothing you can do to prevent this. These groups are just objects,
and domain administrators implicitly own all objects.
If you set an explicit deny, then another administrator can take ownership
of the object and grant herself permissions.

You can eliminate this risk by having a dedicated empty root domain.
You can minimize the risk by having as few domain administrators as
possible, and make use of delegation.

-- 
Glenn L
CCNA, MCSE 2000, MCSE 2003 + Security
"Mike" <Mike@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B923E9D1-0964-48E7-839B-AB7D671F40DC@microsoft.com...
> Cheers for you comments.. It's a interesting one..
>
> Having a generic empty root is a cool idea for future acquisitions /
changes
> etc but raises the issue of arguably over complicating the AD design.. I
want
> to keep things simple and have a contiguous namespace etc.. Future
> acquisitions could be handled via forest trusts etc...
>
> The only real advantage (which is a valid one - but I would like some more
> thoughts) of a dedicated root therefore is to segregate the EA / Schema
> forest roles from other admins etc.
>
> More thoughts and comments welcome!
>
> Mikey.
>
>
> "Glenn L" wrote:
>
> > Its a good question.  I don't even know where I stand on this one
anymore.
> >
> > Pros
> > Seperates the sensitive enterprise admin and schema admin groups from
the
> > rest of the forest.
> > Provides a convenient placeholder domain to move objects into and out of
> > during migration and restructuring activities.
> > DNS namespace politics.  lets say you are contoso.com and you aquire
> > nwtraders.com (notice I have been trolling practice exams lately ;-)
> > I suspect the nwtraders.com executives would raise an eyebrow if they
were
> > to be migrated into nwtraders.contoso.com child domain.
> > If you had a placeholder root domain....lets say corp.com
> > Then you would have contoso.corp.com, and you could migrate nwtraders
into
> > nwtraders.corp.com  Nice and pretty right.....
> >
> > Cons
> > You must maintain 2 computers and 2 Windows server licenses.
> > forest wide sensitive groups in a production domain.  Future divisions
that
> > may require domains of their own may be adverse to that level of trust
in
> > your domain administrators.
> > DNS namespace managment.
> > Take my example.
> > As an alternative to nwtraders.contoso.com, you could create a new tree
in
> > the forest called nwtraders.com (actually it would have to be slightly
> > different to get trusts setup and to use ADMT to perform the migration)
> > Now you have two seperate namespaces you must manage and setup properly
to
> > create seamless name resolution throughout your forest.
> > Of course it is possible to setup multiple tree roots even if there is
an
> > empty placeholder root domain. I can't think of a good reason to have
that.
> >
> > my 2c  :-)
> >
> > -- 
> > Glenn L
> > CCNA, MCSE 2000, MCSE 2003 + Security
> >
> >
> > "Mike" <Mike@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> > news:FA60B8D8-7C62-4E28-8D9E-0352B7B8C727@microsoft.com...
> > > Guys,
> > >
> > > I'm trying to bottom out the definitive answer to creating a dedicated
> > root
> > > domain OR not.
> > >
> > > Having an empty root domain seems to be AD / Win 2000 design best
> > practice,
> > > however since 2003 the idea appears to have faded away..
> > >
> > > I'm looking at creating a pristine forest for the migration of 4 MUD's
> > (2200
> > > users approx..) and a couple of Exchange 5.5 sites.. The organisation
is
> > > largely centrally managed by a 3rd party however has a few in-house
teams
> > > responsible for their own Wintel systems..
> > >
> > > So, for my new pristine forest should I go for a dedicated root (which
> > will
> > > in turn will be namespace root for subsequent children domains, which
I
> > plan
> > > only to create one). Hardware costs aside, (the cost of 2 low end
servers)
> > > what else is holding me back? Right now I see it as a sensible step to
> > secure
> > > the EA and Schema forest wide groups.
> > >
> > > If I didn't go for a dedicated root (as I've read a few people are
> > starting
> > > to do) how should you secure the forest wide groups? OR is the back to
the
> > > point that your Domain Admin group should contain few users and you
> > delegate
> > > control over OU's for specific functionality!
> > >
> > > Comments and thoughts would be most appreciated!
> > >
> > > Mikey.
> >
> >
> >


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