LDAP-UX Client Services B.04.10 with Microsoft Windows Active Directory Server Administrator's Guide

1 Introduction
LDAP-UX Client Services simplifies HP-UX system administration by consolidating account and
configuration information into a central LDAP directory. This LDAP directory can reside on an
HP-UX system, such as Netscape Directory Server 6.x and Red hat Directory Server 7.0/7.1, or
the account information could be integrated into Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003 or 2003 R2 Active
Directory.
Information provided in this manual specifically outlines the installation and administration
tasks of LDAP-UX Client Services with Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory.
For information about integration of LDAP-UX Client Services with HP-UX based directories,
refer to LDAP-UX Client Services Administrator's Guide (J4269-90063) at
http://docs.hp.com/hpux/internet.
This chapter introduces and briefly describes LDAP-UX Client Services and briefly describes
how it works..
Overview of LDAP-UX Client Services
Traditionally, HP-UX account and configuration information is stored in text files, for example
/etc/passwd and /etc/group. Network Information Service (NIS) was developed to ease
system administration by sharing this information across systems on the network. With NIS,
account and configuration information resides on NIS servers. NIS client systems retrieve this
shared configuration information across the network from NIS servers, as shown in “A Simplified
NIS Environment” (page 19):
Figure 1-1 A Simplified NIS Environment
NIS clientNIS client
NIS slave server
NIS master server
NIS slave server
Map transfers
NIS client
NIS Requests
LDAP-UX Client Services for Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003 or 2003 R2 Active Directory improve
on this configuration information sharing. HP-UX account and configuration information is
stored in Active Directory instead of on the local client system. Client systems retrieve this shared
configuration information across the network from Active Directory, as shown in “A Simplified
LDAP-UX Client Services Environment” (page 20). This adds greater scalability, operation with
other applications and platforms, and less network traffic from replica updates.
Overview of LDAP-UX Client Services 19