Systems and Operations
Directory Services
What is a Directory?
A directory is like a database, but tends to contain more descriptive, attribute-based information. This information is generally read much more often than its written. As a consequence, directories usually do not implement the complicated transaction or rollback processes that regular databases used for high-volume complex updates. Directory updates are typically simple all-or-nothing changes, if they are allowed at all. Directories are tuned to give a quick response to high-volume lookup or search operations. They may have the ability to replicate information widely in order to increase availability and reliability, while reducing response time. When directory information is replicated (having multiple copies of the entire directory or portions of the directory), temporary inconsistencies between the replicas may be okay, as long as they eventually get in sync. A directory - defined by today's terms is an object-oriented virtual representation of network resources, distributed across multiple servers in a hierarchical database or flat-file structure.
What is a Directory Service?
A Directory Service is part of a distributed computing environment that provides a way to locate, identify and manage the users and resources they are using that are available on the network. At minimum, it is a general-purpose database that should provide basic lookup features like a phone directory. A full-service Directory Service allows the organization to manage discovery, security, storage, and relationships between some, most or all the networked resources.
Full-service Directory Service products help organizations securely manage simple or complex cross-platform computing resources and network environments by providing a repository foundation for secure user identity information and access management. It should also serves as a foundational piece in solutions for provisioning and e-commerce. A full-service Directory Service plays an important role in the emergence of web-services by supporting access control to web-services deployments and role-based management of users based on the roles and relationships they have with the organization.
Full-service Directory Service products are scalable, cross-platform and provides redundancy and synchronization of the data contained with the Directory Service database. Scalable is extremely important because the Directory Service can grow as the organizations needs grow. Cross-platform means the Directory Service product can be installed on other server operating systems (i.e. Novell NetWare, Microsoft Windows, IBM AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and etc), which is extremely important because the organization is not locked into one computer company’s solutions. Redundancy is extremely important because “all of your eggs” (so to speak) are not on one server. Synchronization is extremely important because all of the database copies stay current when changes are performed.
What Directory Service products are used at JMU?
Novell’s eDirectory - JMU "File and Print". This environment contains the following resources: user accounts, printers, disk volumes for file storage (i.e. drives J:, K:, L:, N: and etc), Novell NetWare servers (i.e. NWDATA1, NWDATA2, NWDATA3 and etc) and Novell Application objects available from the JMU Apps folder that use Novell's ZenWorks for Desktops product.
Novell’s eDirectory - JMU "LDAP". This environment contains your JMU eID used for email, JESS, PeopleSoft 8, ecampus, Blackboard, wireless network JMU people search, authenticated web pages (i.e. accounts portal, downloads page and etc) and 3 Novell NetWare servers. All students, faculty and staff automatically have an account created in this environment once registered as a student and hired as an employee.
Microsoft’s Windows 2003 Active Directory - JMU Domain. This environment contains the following resources: user accounts (for author access to FrontPage websites, Windows-based file shares and other Windows Application Services) and 80+ Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 servers.