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So the difference between Active Directory, LDAP,
IDM, WinBind, OpenLDAP, what are
all these directory services are?
What are the protocols?
I'm so confused.
Please help me which directory to use for my system?
If I have Linux, do I use Active Directory,
do I use LDAP, which is
not actually a directory service?
So a lot of people have that confusion.
So I have added this lesson specifically for
those people who want to learn more about
directory services, so I could help them, they
would be able to implement in their environment.
So the first one and the top one I would say,
which I really like is the Active Directory is for Microsoft.
Microsoft is the owner who has built this product.
When you have thousands of Windows
computers, you do need accounts to
be authenticated against Active Directory server.
So they have implemented or
built an Active Directory product.
So why it is so important
in Windows as compared to Linux?
As I explained it before, Linux is mostly used
in corporate environment for only system administrators or developers
or QA people, very few limited people.
And the users who actually need to log
in, they use the application to log in.
So let's look at example.
For example, let's say you go to Facebook.
You have your account right?
Now do you think when you log into your account,
by the way, Facebook behind the scene running Linux.
So when you log into Facebook and you log into
your user, your email address or password, do you think
that account information is saved in your Linux?
No, it is saved in some kind of database
and that database is communicating with your client.
You are the client on the other side.
So you log in, it
gets authenticated to another machine.
It's not a Linux local account.
It's some kind of Active Directory or
directory services that they are running.
It gets authenticated and that's how
you are able to log in.
Same way in Windows, it works with Active Directory and
used and built by Microsoft. Then we have IDM.
Now, okay, so Active Directory is
used in Windows environment.
What about Linux?
Well, not to worry about it.
Redhat, which is as I explained before,
is corporate level, operating system enterprise level.
They have to come up with something
else too to maintain their users.
Now, Imran, you just said that you
don't really need users in Linux.
Then why do we need IDM? I said that.
But what about the bigger companies?
What about those companies who have like let's
say 100 system administrators working for them?
Then of course you wanted to create user accounts
on a separate Active Directory type of way, right?
So for that, Redhat built this product called
IDM, which is also an abbreviation for Identity Manager.
This is, is it available in CentOS?
I think it is, but I'm not 100% sure.
But I'll look it up.
So it is definitely available in Redhat.
Now also another thing that some of the
Identity Manager features are available in CentOS
that I know, but a complete product?
I'm not 100% sure.
Anyway, look it up, google it
and see how Identity Manager works.
Then we have WinBIND.
Now, what is a WinBIND?
Is that a directory service?
Is that a some kind of directory
out there that's called WinBIND? No.
So what happened is, Samba, you guys
probably have heard of Samba, right?
Samba came up with this add on feature or
you call a component in Linux that allows Linux
users to get authenticated against Windows Active Directory.
What did I just say?
Okay, I'll explain it in a simpler way.
If you have Active Directory users and they
wanted to log into Linux machine, they cannot.
Because Windows only talk to Windows.
So how can I log into Linux machine?
Well, then you need some kind of
a communicator, a messenger in the middle.
So Samba, of course, it's open source.
Samba created this product called WinBIND which allows
Windows users or Windows Active Directory users to
log into Linux machines using WinBIND. How does it work?
You could just go into your Linux machine, you
install, download WinBIND, and configure it, and there
are a few things that you have to make
changes to your machine, and it will start getting
authenticated to the Active Directory.
Is it a long process? No, it's not.
If you read the documentation, there are so
many documentation online that you could use to
configure your Linux machine to get WinBIND
working that will get authenticated for your users
from Active Directory to Microsoft.
Then we have OpenLDAP. LDAP,
I know, what is OpenLDAP.
Now you guys need to make
a difference between LDAP and OpenLDAP. Once again
I'm going to say that again
LDAP is a protocol. Again,
It stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
But in Linux, we need some
kind of open source OpenLDAP.
Because IBM is a product by Redhat that you need to buy.
What if I don't want to buy it?
What if I just wanted to test it?
Then there is a product called OpenLDAP.
You could simply download and
install or yum install openldap.
By the way, I will cover OpenLDAP
installation in Linux in my module seven.
Because in module seven we are going
to enable Linux for Internet access.
And that's how we will download all the
packages, we'll do package management, all that stuff.
So I have put this OpenLDAP lesson in that module.
So remember, if you need to come back to this lesson
to relate to that module seven lesson, you could do that.
So again, going back to my point, OpenLDAP is a
directory services just like Active Directory, just like IBM.
It's open source and it is specifically used
for Linux or Unix type of environment.
Then we have IBM Directory Server.
So there is a product by IBM.
It's their own proprietary product, which
they sell to the customers.
So if your company is looking to buy or
looking to implement a directory services to your environment,
you could also look into the IBM.
I never heard, I never used IBM before, but I
heard many good things about it.
So you could try it, look it up online.
Also there's another one, JumpCloud, which is also
serves as a directory, as a service.
You can look it up, and at the end I put it in LDAP.
I am re-emphasizing right here, guys.
LDAP is not a directory service.
It's just a protocol.
So don't confuse that.
It stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
If you are downloading any of the above directory
service or directory structure in your Linux or Windows,
you need a protocol to communicate to it,
and that protocol is called LDAP.
So once again, I'm going to add that I
will be installing OpenLDAP in my module seven.
So right now you could just wait on it or make a note.
And once you get to module seven, then you'll
see the OpenLDAP installation, download and installation.
So anyway, hopefully this has cleared up a
lot of confusion for those people who actually
are confusing Active Directory, LDAP, OpenLDAP, and WinBIND, and IBM.
If you have any questions, of course feel free
to send me an email or message me.
I'm always here to help.
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