Chapter 11: Doing the Directory Thing

In this chapter, you look at the updates made to the directory service known as Active Directory. You find out what a directory service is, why it's required for a Windows domain and forest structure, and how to plan for and install the Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. It may not be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it's at least as good as cracked pepper crackers!

What Is a Directory Service?

You may not know it, but you use directory services all the time. When you get hungry and crave pizza, you open your telephone directory and look under P for this peerless paragon of sustenance. That telephone book is a kind of directory service - namely, it contains the information you need, along with a way to locate the information you require. (In this case, it's in alphabetical order.) A computerized directory service works pretty much the same way: It contains information about numerous aspects of your company, organizes that information, and provides one or more tools to help you explore the information it contains.

The first operating system from Microsoft to offer directory services was Windows 2000. Novell NetWare has its own native directory service - Novell Directory Services (NDS) or eDirectory in NetWare 6 - and it's been offered in all the released Novell versions of Network Operating System (NOS) since 1993. Microsoft bases the entire Windows Server 2003 domain structure (which started with Windows 2000) around its directory services, rather than simply offering them as an add-on to previous domain implementations . Microsoft's directory service is called Active Directory.

TECHNICAL STUFF 

Although Active Directory and Novell Directory Services do not interact directly, the capability to synchronize Active Directory with Novell Directories is possible through the Microsoft Directory Synchronization Services (MSDSS). MSDSS, which is included with Services for NetWare 5, allows Active Directory synchronization with NDS and NetWare 3. x binderies so that system administrators can reduce their overall directory management tasks by administering one, rather than two, separate directory services.

When it comes to its names , Microsoft has an obsession with the word active. There's Active Desktop, Active X, and now Active Directory. However, the term is accurate - after all, Active Directory is active (when it's used correctly).