What are the implications of enabling the Recycle Bin feature in Active Directory?

Solution 1:

The main implication of enabling this feature is that it will increase the size of your DIT. (Your database.) It tends to increase the size because objects that have been deleted hang around longer than they would without the AD Recycle Bin enabled.

Solution 2:

I think the only reason it's not enabled by default is because in order to use it the AD Forest function level needs to be raised (minimum 2008 R2) and it's this particular piece of administration that requires all of the preparation - that is, if the domain was created on NT or 2003 for example, then you won;t be able to enable it until the forest function level is at 2008

So it's not enabled out of the box for that reason - the same for 2012, it's not enable out of the box because you installing a domain controller not setting up a forest, there is also this to consider:

When you enable Active Directory Recycle Bin, all of the objects that were deleted before Active Directory Recycle Bin was enabled become recycled objects and are no longer visible in the Deleted Objects container. You will not be able to recover them with Active Directory Recycle Bin. The only way you can restore these objects is by using an authoritative restore from a backup of AD DS that was performed before Active Directory Recycle Bin was enabled.

You can enable recycle bin with PowerShell

Enable-ADOptionalFeature "Recycle Bin Feature" -server `
((Get-ADForest -Current LocalComputer).DomainNamingMaster) `
-Scope ForestOrConfigurationSet `
-Target (Get-ADForest -Current LocalComputer)