What is organizational unit (OU)? | Definition from TechTarget (2024)

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What is organizational unit (OU)? | Definition from TechTarget? ›

An OU

Let's take a closer look. Organizational units (OUs) are container objects in Active Directory that allow you to organize and manage your network resources, including users, computers, and other objects.

An organizational unit (OU) is a construct used to represent an organization whose resources are logically separate from those resources of other, similar organizations. You use OUs to control access to resources and to ensure data segregation.

An organizational unit (OU) is a subdivision within an Active Directory into which you can place users, groups, computers, and other organizational units. You can create organizational units to mirror your organization's functional or business structure.

Organizational units (OUs) in an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) managed domain let you logically group objects such as user accounts, service accounts, or computer accounts. You can then assign administrators to specific OUs, and apply group policy to enforce targeted configuration settings.

Organizational units can represent traditional, hierarchical entities such as a division, department or team. They can also represent functional or ad-hoc groupings, such as committee, a task force, a project management organization, a class (for education) and so on.

Examples would include: Department (e.g. human resources) within a corporation. Division (e.g. LifeScan, Inc.) that is owned by but separate from a parent corporation (Johnson & Johnson), although this would commonly be placed in a separate domain.

An organizational unit (OU) is a type of container in Active Directory. An OU can contain one or many AD objects, such as user accounts, computer accounts, printers and groups.

An Organizational Unit (OU) is a special container in the Active Directory domain that can contain different AD objects: other containers, groups, users, and computer accounts. In this guide, we'll look at what Organizational Units are used for in Active Directory and how to manage them using the GUI and PowerShell.

What is an OU and what are they used for? ›

An OU is a container within a Microsoft Windows Active Directory (AD) domain that can hold users, groups and computers. It is the smallest unit to which an administrator can assign Group Policy settings or account permissions.

An organizational unit is simply a group that an administrator can create in the Google Admin console to apply settings to a specific set of users.

The University of Oklahoma is a comprehensive research university, located on three campuses in Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. OU is designated by the Carnegie Foundation as a Highest Research Activity institution, placing it in the highest tier of comprehensive research universities in the nation.

An organization has one management account along with zero or more member accounts. You can organize the accounts in a hierarchical, tree-like structure with a root at the top and organizational units nested under the root. Each account can be directly in the root, or placed in one of the OUs in the hierarchy.

An OU can contain other OUs or any type of object type, such as users, computers, and printers. OUs can be nested to logically organize network resources.

AD groups can manage permissions, while organizational units cannot. AD groups possess their own security identifier (SID), whereas organizational units do not.

The difference between an OU and a group is that OUs can contain different kinds of objects rather than being limited to accounts or groups, whereas groups can only contain accounts and other groups.

In practice, organizational units and AD groups serve two very different purposes: organizational units are used to delegate admin rights and apply group policy settings, while groups are used to manage permissions – for example NTFS permissions and share permissions on the file server or mailbox permissions in ...

Open Active Directory Users and Computers and select the domain. Right-click and select New > Organizational Unit. Deselect Protect container from accidental deletion. Type the name for the organizational unit, for example, Delinea, then click OK.