Windows 2000 Active directory

[Forrest Dickinson]

I work as a Network Admin not a Programmer so this will be from a Network
Admins point of view.  A directory service, whether it is NDS, LDAP, or Active
Directory is designed to centrally store information in a hierarchical three
dimensional structured directory tree.  In the case of say a company lan/wan a
directory service usually stores users, groups, shares, nodes, printers, other
servers, network apps, ect. (basically everything a Network Admin uses to
administrator a network and everything a user needs to access the network).
With a directory service you do not have to manage accounts and network
resources on a per server bases.   Take a 500 user network with 15 servers
performing various tasks,  a user on this network authenticates with the
directory service and the servers use the directory as a guide as to what
resources are available for that user.  Without a directory service that user
would have to have a separate user account for each of the servers the user
needed access to on the network.  Managing large networks without a directory
service could prove to be a daunting task (what if you had 3000 users and 160
servers).

Linux currently does not have a true directory service to fill this need (there
is NIS, but its not a true directory service and there is OpenLDAP, but I have
yet to find someone who actually got it to work in this fashion).  I think
there is Novell NDS for Linux, but this would be very expensive.  The lack of a
directory service can make linux difficult to administer in an enterprise
environment.  In my opinion a functional easy to administer LDAP directory
service is the key to Linux's "survival" in the corporate enterprise world.

Brian Kelsay wrote:

> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/23/2134237&mode=thread
> This story at Slashdot starts off talking about a Gov't users of Unix
> needing to implement standard desktops for productivity apps (office apps
> and PeopleSoft) and then he mentions Active Directory and goes into how his
> Dept. is going to connect to other locations that will be using Active
> Directory.
>
> Can someone tell me what is so important about having Active Directory?  I
> have never used Novell and NDS (although I know the term NDS), but have
> never heard what it can do or if it is even important.  If it is so great to
> have directory services why have Unix and NT networks gotten away without
> having one for so long?  Also, is there a Directory Service in the works for
> Linux?
>
> Thanks,
> Brian
>