NetWare Directory Services

2-4
Understanding NetWare Directory Services
What are Directory Services?
NOTE: You will encounter several new terms as you work with NDS. These are defined in
the following discussion of the basic architecture and design of NDS.
Table 2-1 Features and Benefits Provided by NetWare Directory Services
Feature Benefit
Simple
Administration
The single point of administration provided in the NDS architecture allows for
simple and cost-effective management of your entire network and its resources.
Each supervisor of your network uses the same management utilities and database
of resource objects regardless of each supervisor’s physical location on the network.
Network resources, such as users and groups, also maintain a single point of access
to the network. This allows you to maintain a single identity for each resource you
create throughout the entire network.
Advanced
Security
The NDS architecture provides the possibility of improved security. NDS
incorporates the advanced RSA (Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, developers of this
particular public key encryption system) security features that make encrypted,
single-login authentication to network resources possible.
NDS security is based on a top-down architecture. All rights to network resources
are established through Access Control Lists (ACLs) that allow for sophisticated,
but easily managed, administration.
Usability The hierarchical database structure of the NDS design reduces network traffic and
makes retrieving objects and properties very easy and efficient. You can search the
entire Directory tree to locate an object, or a search can be initiated at any level of
the Directory tree.
Enhanced searching techniques allow objects to be located in a variety of ways,
such as using relational expressions and wild cards. Also, objects in the Directory
tree do not advertise. Traffic is generated only when an application asks the
Directory for information and to allow for synchronization of NDS databases.
Reliability The replicated nature of NDS creates a fault-tolerant system to ensure that you have
no single point of failure in your network system. If implemented correctly, your
network maintains operation through routine hardware and software maintenance.
Synchronization of Directory replicas is automatic and does not require any
administrative intervention.