Optimal Active Directory design for use with Group Policy

[Frank]

I am working on cleaning up our active directory setup and optimizing it (at least the parts I can do) to roll out group policies to the machines/users. I have attached a screenshot of our currnt setup. I can make any changes to the "Pueblo" OU but the rest is out of my control.

Right now we have users and computers in a completly seperate OU. Computers are seperated into seperate OU's where users are in one big OU. We also have groups setup for the users that serve as Security Groups for our local file server as well as distrbutuion groups for exchange.

Should I seperate the users into seperate OU's as well and combine them inside the same basic OU as the computers?

IE: Seperate all users and computers into these different OU's and then assign a different GPO for each?

Pueblo -> Sprint -> Agents

Pueblo -> Sprint -> Team Leads

Pueblo -> Sprint -> Supervisors

Pueblo -> Sprint -> Managers

Pueblo -> Sprint -> Training

[whitebread]

Just a thought for you: make sure to disable Regedit, msconfig, and compmgmt.msc (among other things). Regedit can undo any GP setting :shiftyninja:

I'm sure you knew that, though :)

[bobbba]

the idea is that the AD is flexible enough to do it anyway you want. There's not really a wrong answer as long as it successfully meets your requirements.

for example you certainly don't have to split users based on job role into different OU's unless your GPO decisions mean that it would be helpful to do so. at the same time, there is nothing wrong if you choose to do it that way because your GPO's are applied like that. if it's not for GPO requirements or delegation, job roles would be better represented by groups and their permissions using AGLP (Accounts in Global groups in Local groups assigned Permissions to resources).

personally i would suggest OU's are used based on department identification and delegation requirements. Also bear in mind that you can control whether a GPO is applied or not via Security Group filtering on the GPO.

[Nick Sheldon]

  bobbba said:

personally i would suggest OU's are used based on department identification and delegation requirements. Also bear in mind that you can control whether a GPO is applied or not via Security Group filtering on the GPO.

Agreed.

That's our set up.

Because of this we can give our HR dept access to their cd-rom drives, whilst every other dept is restricted.