Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/ Take Control of OS X Server, Chapter 4: Directory Services Charles Edge This article is a pre-release chapter in the upcoming 'Take Control of OS X Server,' by Charles Edge, scheduled for public release later in 2014. Apart from [1]Chapter 1: Introducing OS X Server, and [2]Chapter 2: Choosing Server Hardware, these chapters are available only to [3]TidBITS members; see [4]'Take Control of OS X Server' Streaming in TidBITS for details. __________________________________________________________________ Directory Services A directory service is a shared repository of usernames, passwords, network resources, and other information. Mac network clients (and by 'client,' I mean a computer) use a directory service to look up various things. For the typical reader of this book, a directory service is where you'll create and store user accounts for services including file sharing, calendar, and contacts. The directory service is at the heart of many large networks. But a directory service is really just a database that lives on a server, along with some underlying technologies that Apple collectively refers to as Open Directory. Some directory services can have roles that are broken out amongst a number of servers, but for the purposes of this book, I'll assume you need only one directory server (or at most two) to keep this chapter from expanding into a book of its own. The rest of this 5,728-word article is currently restricted to paid TidBITS members. If you'd like to support our work and [5]become a paid member, it's an easy process and we'll throw in some additional perks. If you are a paid TidBITS member, you can read the rest of this article by logging into your account. Clicking My Account > Login at the left. [6]Contact us if you have problems. References 1. http://tidbits.com/article/14748 2. http://tidbits.com/article/14749 3. http://tidbits.com/member_benefits.html 4. http://tidbits.com/article/14744 5. file://localhost/member_benefits.html 6. mailto:ace@tidbits.com .