Microsoft® Windows Server 2003: Administrator’s Companion

Understanding Directory Services

In a typical Windows NT computing environment, a user can log on to the network with a user name, let’s say crussel and a password. Assuming that permissions are correctly granted, crussel can click Network Neighborhood or open a mapped drive and browse for needed files.

All this works very well until the scope of the network changes. The company adds e-mail, and crussel gains another identity ([e-mail]). The additional services and databases and administrative tools—each one identifying Charlie Russel slightly differently—need to be accessible by the same user. When you consider that this is just one of hundreds or even thousands of users, it isn’t hard to see how errors can arise that can be ...