Single vs Multi Forest - Pros and Cons

[Former Member]

We are currently up against the decision of going with a 5 forest vs a single forest domain structure and would like to know the pros and cons with regards to running a central EPO?

[rgc]

As far as I aware, there is no impact until / unless if you have 2 way trust relationship between forest domains to sync those machines to same ePO through different registered servers to load the systems to deploy the agent from ePO.

If you have other way of handling the MA install like through SCCM, GPO, login scripts or so.

There is no impact, since either way if the machine installed MA, it works through the managed agent concept & removes the dependency of the machine is member of domain or work group.

Other than this, If you have policy assignment rules with user based or system based policy, which it should be reachable to access the domain of another forest from ePO console, hence 2 way trust relation is a need.

[cdinet]

Two way trust would be needed, but you might also need to make some changes on the nic of the epo server for dns.

Add any dns servers for each domain

append dns suffix for other domains so there is some dns resolution across the domains for wakeups, pushes, etc.

You will also need to make sure all the required ports are open between the environments.  KB66797.