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Server platforms Toolkit

A beginner's guide to NDS

Ron Nutter Tech Republic

Published: 25 Mar 2003 10:35 GMT

Although Microsoft might not want to admit it, there are other network operating systems besides Windows 2000 and Windows NT. Once upon a time, Novell ruled the networking world with NetWare. Even if NetWare isn't as dominant as it once was, many Windows administrators will eventually find themselves facing unfamiliar territory -- an old reliable NetWare server and Novell Directory Services (NDS).

What do you do if you're such a Windows administrator? Migrating from NetWare to Windows isn't always an option. In that case, you'll have to learn to deal with NetWare and NDS. In this article, I'll cover some of the basics of NDS that you'll need to know.

What is NDS?
In short, NDS is the glue that holds a NetWare network together. From a Windows administrator's perspective, NDS is the NetWare version of Active Directory. However, unlike Active Directory, which is tied to Windows 2000, NDS can exist on a NetWare server, Windows 2000, Unix, and even Linux. Also, where Active Directory is basically a 1.0 release, NDS has been around since 1994, undergoing several revisions, updates, and bug fixes, making it more robust and stable than Active Directory.

In versions of NetWare prior to NetWare 4.x, you had to create a user on each server that the user would be accessing via what was known as the bindery. With the release of NDS, a network administrator can create the user once on the network and then assign rights to the resources on the network that the user needs, no matter how many servers are on the network. Also with NDS, each server on the network has the ability to have its own copy of the NDS database.

NDS terminology
When using NDS and NetWare, you'll encounter new terms for everyday things. For example, "records" in the directory are known as "objects." These objects represent network resources that can do different things on the network. All objects have properties that define them. Properties can be such things as login scripts, access rights, general information, group membership, and so on.

NDS contains two basic kinds of objects: container objects and leaf objects. Container objects hold specific information about the organisation of the database. Leaf objects contain information specific to a purpose. A good way to distinguish between container and leaf objects is that the container can hold other objects, either leaf or other container objects. Leaf objects can't hold other objects.

Container objects
Container objects help you organise your NDS tree as it grows. There are four container objects that form the basis of an NDS tree:

Root
Organisation
Country
Organisational unit

The root object is the one that all NDS trees begin with. Think of the root as the starting point for your NDS tree. The root object is created for you automatically when NDS is installed on the server during installation. The root is a required part of the NDS tree, and you will have only one root object per tree. You can create three types of objects at the root of the tree: the organisation object, the country object, and the alias object.

The organisation object is usually the first NDS object you will have in the tree after the root object. This is your branching-off point for the rest of your NDS tree. This object normally represents your company's name. Although it's possible to have multiple organisation objects at the root of your NDS tree, normally you have only one.

As you create other objects such as user or group objects, you'll place them inside your organisation object. When you assign either file or directory rights to the container they are in, objects that are members of the organisation object automatically inherit the rights granted to the higher-level object that contains them. The act of assigning rights to a file or directory is also known as giving a "value" to a "property" of the container object. Rights and permissions are one of the "properties" that you can assign a container object or a leaf object.