Novell eDirectory

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Novell eDirectory (formerly called Novell Directory Services, NDS) is an X.500 compatible directory service software product released in 1993 by Novell, Inc. for centrally managing access to resources on multiple servers and computers within a given network.

Features

Novell Directory Services is a hierarchical, object oriented database that represents all the assets in an organization in a logical tree. Assets can include people, positions, servers, workstations, applications, printers, services, groups, etc. The use of dynamic rights inheritance and equivalence allows both global and fine grained access controls to be implemented efficiently. Access rights between objects in the tree are determined at the time of the request and is determined by the rights assigned to the objects by virtue of their location in the tree, any security equivalences and individual assignments.

eDirectory supports partitioning at any point in the tree and replication of that partition to any number of servers. Replication between each server occurs periodically using deltas of the objects to reduce LAN/WAN traffic. Each server can act as a master of the information it holds (providing the replica is not read only). Additionally, replicas may be filtered to only include defined attributes to increase speed (eg a replica may be configured to only include a user's name and phone number for use in a corporate address book).

eDirectory supports referential integrity, multi-master replication and has a modular authentication architecture. It can be accessed via LDAP, DSML, SOAP, ODBC, JDBC, JNDI and ADSI and has been proven to scale to over 1 billion objects.^[1]

Supported platforms

• Windows 2000
• Windows Server 2003
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Novell NetWare
• Sun Solaris
• IBM AIX
• HP-UX

Storage

Versions of eDirectory prior to version 8 (then called Novell Directory Services) used a record-based database management engine called Recman, which relied on the Transaction Tracking System built into the NetWare OS. Since version 8 eDirectory—along with the GroupWise collaboration suite starting with version 5—uses the FLAIM database engine. FLAIM (FLexible Adaptable Information Management) is an open source embeddable database engine developed by Novell, originally used by the now-defunct WordPerfect Office, and released under the GPL license in 2006. This change allowed for it to be ported to other platforms such as Windows, Linux and Unix.

Deployments

According to IDC, eDirectory is used in over 80% of Fortune 1000 companies.^[2]

• Direction Générale des Impôts, the French Tax Authority, uses Novell eDirectory as the identity repository for taxpayers. Today the directory hosts several hundred thousand identities and will grow to accommodate 35 million (encompassing virtually all French taxpayers) when the project is complete.^[3]
• TransUnion, one of the world’s largest credit reporting agencies, has deployed eDirectory to personalize the Web experience for 10 to 12 million customers annually.^[4]

Further reading

• Killpack, Rick (2005). eDirectory Field Guide. Apress. ISBN 978-1-59059-553-4. 
• Kuo, Peter; Jim Henderson (2004). Novell's Guide to Troubleshooting eDirectory. Novell Press. ISBN 978-0-7897-3146-3. 
• Jeffrey F., Hughes (2002). Novells Cross Platform Guide to eDirectory. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-7645-4915-1. 
• Jeffrey F., Hughes (2001). Effective eDirectory Design & Proactive Analysis. Directory Design. ISBN 978-0-9717420-0-0. 

See also

• List of LDAP software

References

External links

• Novell eDirectory product page
• eDirectory Cool Solutions - tips & tricks, guides, tools and other resources submitted by the eDirectory community
• eDirectory Online Forums - Free online support from users, engineers, developers and enthusiasts