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The organizational unit provides both flexibility and greater control. It is really an administrative container in which a logical grouping of network resources can be collected and their management delegated. Its form is hierarchical; that is, parent and child relationships exist between top- and lower-level OUs. The objects that constitute an OU are strictly up to the domain administrator. For example, the third floor of a large building can be defined as an OU; since the sales staff occupies the third floor, each of these users can be regarded as an OU as well. An organizational unit can contain other OUs. Thus, the printer OU can be placed inside the sales staff OU and the administration printer support can be delegated to an individual on the third floor.
The creation, deletion, modification, and moving of organizational units is a simple process. However, the ease of these activities belies the importance of proper planning.
The following steps should be followed to create an organizational unit within a domain or child domain:
Open the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in.
Right-click Domain 
click New select Organizational Unit.
In the OU dialog box, enter the Name for the organizational unit. Click OK.
An organizational unit can be deleted as easily as it was created. However, great caution should be used in such deletion since objects in the OU will also be removed (Figure 6.20). For example, deleting the sales OU deletes all its users and resources. The following steps are invoked to delete an OU:
Open the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in.
Right-click Organizational Unit select Delete.
Confirm the deletion by clicking Yes.
The properties of an OU are modified like any other Active Directory object. A discussion of standard object modification appears earlier in this chapter. Follow these steps to modify OU properties:
Open the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in.
Right-click the targeted OU select Properties.
Make changes within the General, Managed By, and/or Group Policy tabs.
Click OK.
One of the major innovations of Windows Server 2003 is the ability to easily move or relocate an OU to another domain or child domain to reflect the changes that regularly occur in an enterprise. The steps are as follows:
Open the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
Expand the targeted Domain or OU right-click the OU click Move.
Highlight the new location of the OU in the Move dialog box Click OK.
To accommodate shifts in names or functions, the OU renaming function is handy. It requires the following steps:
Open the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC snap-in.
Expand the targeted Domain or OU right-click the OU click Rename.
Enter the new name Click OK.
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