[ActiveDir] Handling different schemas - managing & maintaining updates

[Paul Williams]

I can't get too specific about the requirements, so please don't ask ;-)   I'm looking for your ideas, opinions and experience on how you maintain different sets of schemas for different forests that you manage (for the same customer).   Basically, consider this: you have an internal domain (single domain forest) and another (or several) single domain forest(s) in a DMZ.  They might have Exchange and one or two other directory-enabled apps that extend the schema, and you have your own standard/default schema.    Do you see any security implications in having the same schema in the DMZ-type networks as that of the internal domain?  And if not, how do you manage updates and testing, etc?   I might have several single domain forests.  Internal ones, and serveral of these DMZ based domains.  It's not really a DMZ, but is a different network and is considered external to the internal domain(s).  This is for a number of interoperability apps, and no we can't use ADAM or equivalent.  We're using plenty of ADAM.   The main thing I'm intersted here is, as mentioned above, if you were happy to have a consistent schema, how do you maintain that?  Would you use a script to compare and export differences, etc.?   Or, would you recommend against having a standard schema?  I can't see why anyone would recommend against this unless there's a major security concern I've overlooked as it will greatly complicate future extensions, but I'm interested nonetheless.   Please assume a large enterprise environment that follows ITIL and has a proper test environment, e.g. ADAM -> VM -> Dev -> Pre-prod -> live.   Thanks,     --Paul