[CentOS] stupid Centos-DS questions

Thu Nov 19 16:28:06 UTC 2009
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

Alan McKay wrote:
> OK, I'm mostly through everything up to and including Chapter 5 in
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/dir-server/8.1/install/Installation_Guide-Advanced_Configuration-Making-DS.html
> 
> And looking through the ToC for the rest, I do not see that my
> questions will be answered by this doc.  So please feel free to point
> me to other docs.
> 
> This manual seems to assuming I already know what it is I want to do,
> and what "Directory Services" are all about.   Invalid assumption.
> 
> For example, right now I am reading about how to set up different
> instances of this-or-that (Admin Server, Directory Server, yadda,
> yadda).   What it does not tell me is why I would want to do that.  It
> does not even tell me "what is an 'instance'" .
> 
> I've never done any sort of DS, so this is all new stuff to me.
> Suggested reading is very welcomed.
> 
> What is even more welcome is pointers to case studies or template
> examples.   We are a very small company with only about 30 people
> right now.  Though we do have a convoluted network with 3 distinct
> network areas separated by VPNs.  I'm new here (and put in charge),
> and we are not even running DNS yet (eeep!  for REALZ!!!).   To me it
> makes sense to have 3 different DNS subdomains because of some quirks
> they have in their product architecture here.   I'm thinking
> "office.example.dom", "production.example.com" and "rc.example.com".
> And from the bit I've read so far on DS, it seems to be recommended to
> have your DS mirror your DNS. 

You don't _have_ to delegate DNS subdomains off to different servers or 
make different zone files for them.  It just provides a hierarchical 
branch point if different people will be managing the namespace.  If it 
is all managed together, it is fine to have records for 
a.office.example.com and a.production.example.com all in the zone file 
for example.com.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com