Specifications

4 Open Directory Planning

Like the plumbing and wiring in a building, directory

services for a network must be planned in advance, not

on an ad hoc basis.

Keeping information in shared directory domains gives you more control over your

network, allows more users access to the information, and makes maintaining the

information easier for you. But the amount of control and convenience depends on the

effort you put into planning your shared domains. The goal of directory domain

planning is to design the simplest arrangement of shared domains that gives your

Mac OS X users easy access to the network resources they need and minimizes the time

you spend maintaining user records and other administrative data.

This chapter presents guidelines for planning Open Directory services and describes

tools for managing them.

General Planning Guidelines

If you do not need to share user and resource information among multiple Mac OS X

computers, there is very little directory domain planning necessary. Everything can be

accessed from local directory domains. Just ensure that all individuals who need to use

a particular Mac OS X computer are defined as users in the local directory domain on

the computer.

Local