What is a forest?

[KapilAsdhir]

What is a forest?

[CWA]

A forest is the top level in the framework that holds all the objects, its attributes and rules (attribute syntax) together in an Active Directory. The forest can hold one or more transitive, trust-linked Trees

[nobita_deptrai]

A Forest

A forest is a collection of multiple trees that share a common global catalog, directory schema, logical structure, and directory configuration. Forest has automatic two-way transitive trust relationships. The very first domain you create in the forest is called the forest root domain.

Forests allow organizations to group their divisions which use different naming scheme, and may need to operate independently. But as an organization they want to communicate with the entire organization via transitive trusts, and share the same schema and configuration container.