Читать книгу Networking All-in-One For Dummies - Lowe Doug, Doug Lowe - Страница 77

Directories are everywhere — and were, even in the days when they were all hard copy. When you needed to make a phone call, you looked up the number in a phone directory. When you needed to find the address of a client, you looked her up in your Rolodex. And then there were the nonbook versions: When you needed to find the Sam Goody store at a shopping mall (for example), you looked for the mall directory — usually, a lighted sign showing what was where.

Networks have directories, too, providing information about the resources that are available on the network: users, computers, printers, shared folders, and files. Directories are essential parts of any server operating system.

The most popular modern directory service is called Active Directory. Active Directory is a standard component of all Windows operating systems, and because it’s so popular, most other operating systems support it as well. Active Directory is a database that organizes information about a network and all its computers and users. It’s simple enough to use for networks with just a few computers and users, but powerful enough to work with large networks containing tens of thousands of computers and users. Figure 5-1 shows the Active Directory Users and Computers tool, which manages Active Directory user and computer accounts on Windows Server 2019.

FIGURE 5-1: Managing Active Directory Users and Computers.