Domain Admins vs. Enterprise Admins

Many people have asked me this question on “What is the difference between an Enterprise Admin and a Domain Admin group in an Active Directory environment?” for an example the Enterprise Admin group have complete control of the entire forest (all the domains in the forest) where as the Domain Admins have access only to their specific domain.

The following table is an extract from TechNet

Group	Description	Default user rights
Domain Admins	Members of this group have full control of the domain. By default, this group is a member of the Administrators group on all domain controllers, all domain workstations, and all domain member servers at the time they are joined to the domain. By default, the Administrator account is a member of this group. Because the group has full control in the domain, add users with caution.	Access this computer from the network; Adjust memory quotas for a process; Back up files and directories; Bypass traverse checking; Change the system time; Create a pagefile; Debug programs; Enable computer and user accounts to be trusted for delegation; Force a shutdown from a remote system; Increase scheduling priority; Load and unload device drivers; Allow log on locally; Manage auditing and security log; Modify firmware environment values; Profile single process; Profile system performance; Remove computer from docking station; Restore files and directories; Shut down the system; Take ownership of files or other objects.
Enterprise Admins (only appears in the forest root domain)	Members of this group have full control of all domains in the forest. By default, this group is a member of the Administrators group on all domain controllers in the forest. By default, the Administrator account is a member of this group. Because this group has full control of the forest, add users with caution.	Access this computer from the network; Adjust memory quotas for a process; Back up files and directories; Bypass traverse checking; Change the system time; Create a pagefile; Debug programs; Enable computer and user accounts to be trusted for delegation; Force shutdown from a remote system; Increase scheduling priority; Load and unload device drivers; Allow log on locally; Manage auditing and security log; Modify firmware environment values; Profile single process; Profile system performance; Remove computer from docking station; Restore files and directories; Shut down the system; Take ownership of files or other objects.

Most of the IT guys misunderstands the roles of these user groups and their user rights in a domain environment and a forest environment. Now I hope you have a pretty clear picture on what members of these two groups can do.