CODEWITHSUNDEEP
active-directory
Jonathan Wilbur
Jonathan Wilbur

Reputation: 1147

Difference between "People" and "Users" OU in Active Directory

In the default Active Directory, there is ou=Users,dc=example,dc=com and, beneath that, ou=People,ou=Users,dc=example,dc=com. What is the distinction between the intended purposes of the two?

It seems like maybe ou=Users would contain service accounts, whereas ou=People is specifically for real people, but I cannot find any documentation of this. For that matter, is there documentation anywhere on the rationale behind this layout?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4560

Answers (1)

Gabriel Luci
Gabriel Luci

Reputation: 41008

It's entirely up to the administrators of the domain to decide. There is no standard. There is some documentation about how to organize it here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-ds/plan/reviewing-ou-design-concepts

This describes the default containers in Active Directory: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-ds/plan/delegating-administration-of-default-containers-and-ous

Out of the box, Users is actually a container, not an OU (CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com - notice the CN=). The only difference is that only OUs can have group policies applied to them, but containers cannot.

If yours is actually an OU, that means that someone has already changed that.

To my knowledge (but maybe I'm wrong) there is also no People OU out of the box, so that must have been added by someone.

Upvotes: 2

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