# The Forest

The forest is what defines everything; it is the container that holds all of the other bits and pieces of the network together -- without the forest all of the other trees and domains would not be able to interact. The one thing to note when thinking of the forest is to not think of it too literally -- it is a physical thing just as much as it is a figurative thing. When we say "forest", it is only a way of describing the connection created between these trees and domains by the network.

![](https://i.imgur.com/EZawnqU.png)

﻿Forest Overview -

﻿﻿A forest is a collection of one or more domain trees inside of an Active Directory network. It is what categorizes the parts of the network as a whole.

The Forest consists of these parts which we will go into farther detail with later:

* Trees - A hierarchy of domains in Active Directory Domain Services
* Domains - Used to group and manage objects&#x20;
* Organizational Units (OUs) - Containers for groups, computers, users, printers and other OUs
* Trusts - Allows users to access resources in other domains
* Objects - users, groups, printers, computers, shares
* Domain Services - DNS Server, LLMNR, IPv6
* Domain Schema - Rules for object creation

What is the term for a hierarchy of domains in a network?&#x20;

What is the term for the rules for object creation?&#x20;

What is the term for containers for groups, computers, users, printers, and other OUs? \
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