Active Directory, Second Edition

Interoperating with Other Directories

Now that we’ve covered what Microsoft is doing with their directory products, let’s review some of the issues around integrating a mixed directory environment. As we mentioned earlier, supporting multiple directories within a large organization is a necessary practice. You may already have several directories deployed, some of which are not Microsoft-based. A common question in this scenario is how to get your directories to work together.

Getting Data from One Directory to Another

Perhaps the most common use of a directory is to access employee, customer, or student information. One of the problems of supporting multiple directories is that for each directory to be useful, it needs to store similar data. It would be very helpful if there were a standard RFC that defined a replication scheme for LDAP directories, but unfortunately there is not. As a result, each directory vendor has implemented their own way to replicate data between servers. This is where metadirectories come into play. The primary purpose of a metadirectory is to facilitate data flow and provisioning across systems. If you have several directories, and writing your own scripts to replicate data is not a possibility, implementing a metadirectory is a valid option.

Using Common Tools Across Directories

One of the biggest reasons for not wanting to implement multiple directories is that they have to be managed differently. Fortunately, both Active Directory and AD/AM are based on ...