Part II
Creating and Maintaining User Accounts and Directories
In this part . . .
Users are the reason for servers. Keeping track of users is the reason for much that’s in Mountain Lion Server. This part focuses on maintaining shared network directories that enable multiple users and servers to communicate and enable network administrators to keep track of it all. I describe user authentication, the process in which a user connects to the computer with a name and password.
Directory services enable you to manage not only user accounts but the computers themselves. Here, I describe how OS X Server’s Open Directory can centrally store information about the users and the computers in a single place, and in a secure manner. A shared directory also separates the user from a specific computer so that a user can log in from any computer and access his or her home directory.
On large networks, you may need to access other directory servers hosted on Windows servers. That’s no problem for Mountain Lion Server and Active Directory, as you discover in this part.
