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organizational unit

Active Directory Structure Explained: Forest, Domain, and OU (2026)

June 15, 2026June 12, 2026 by racknotes
Active Directory structure diagram: forest, domain, and OU hierarchy

9 min readActive Directory structure uses three logical layers: forest, domain, and OU. This guide explains how they work, when each is needed, and the design decisions most SMB environments get wrong.

Categories Active Directory Tags active directory, group policy, identity, organizational unit, Windows Server, Windows Server 2025

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