NDS performs best with about 1,000 objects or fewer per partition. This number is approximate, since other variables also affect performance, such as:
Since you create partitions based on container objects, the upper levels of your NDS tree should reflect your partitioning strategy.
Suppose, for instance, that you have already planned Organizational Units (and partitions) for your company's North and South sites. Your plan for the NDS tree, with partitions shown in green, might look like the example below:
This is a good start for designing the upper levels of the tree. At this point, though, you should consider the number of objects per partition. For example, if you project 1,500 objects at the North site and 500 objects at the South site, you will want an additional Organizational Unit (and partition) at the North site. See the example below.
The additional Organizational Unit and partition should represent a distinct division of the LAN topology, such as the physical network in one building or one floor of a building.
Whenever you plan a new partition, you should also plan enough servers to hold replicas of that partition. Three replicas are recommended per partition, hosted on different NDS servers. In the example above, you would need nine NDS servers.
After designing of the upper levels of the tree, you should plan workgroup containers and leaf objects.