Configuration Terminology

During installation and configuration, you are prompted for values relating to various types of domains, organizations, and related configuration information.

• Domain Name System (DNS). The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed internet directory service. DNS is used mostly to translate between domain names and IP addresses, and to control email delivery.

• DNS Domain Name. A DNS domain name identifies a group of servers on a network. Examples of domain names: example.com, red.example.com

• Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). An FQDN is the human-readable name corresponding to the TCP/IP address of a network interface, as found on a server, router, or other networked device. An FQDN for a server includes both its host name and its domain name. Example of a FQDN for a server: myComputer.example.com

• Host Name. The host name is a unique name by which a server is known on a network. A host name can be represented as the combination of a server's local name with its organization's domain name. This representation is also the FQDN for the server. Within the context of a domain, a host name can be represented solely by its local name. This is because the local name must be unique within the domain. Examples of host names:

  • FQDN representation: myComputer.red.example.com

  • Local name representation which is unique within red.example.com domain: myComputer

• Configuration Directory. An instance of Directory Server that stores configuration information for various administration domains. The administration server accesses the configuration directory when administering these domains. The base suffix of the subtree that holds configuration information is always o=NetscapeRoot.

• User/Group Directory. An instance of Directory Server that stores information about organizations in an LDAP hierarchy. Typically, organizations are represented by their DNS domain names in the LDAP hierarchy. Each organization in the hierarchy might contain entries representing people, organizational units, printers, documents, and so on.

• Administration Domain. A set of servers represented in a Directory Server configuration directory server and administered through the Sun Java System Server Console. Typically, an administration domain is represented in the LDAP hierarchy with its DNS domain name, but you can use any name to represent the group of servers that make up the administration domain.

• Email Domain. A unique domain in DNS that is used for routing email. An email domain for an organization can be its DNS domain name, but can also be another domain used to route email. For example: DNS Domain: example.com Email Domain: sfbay.example.com (In Sun's LDAP Schema 2, the email domain is represented in the User/Group directory as an attribute of an organization.)

• Authentication Domain. In Access Manager, circle of trust is implemented as an authentication domain. An authentication domain is not a DNS domain. In Access Manager, an authentication domain describes entities that are grouped together for the purposes of identity federation.

• Organization DN. The unique name of an organization in the LDAP hierarchy of a User/Group directory. Typically, organizations are represented by their DNS domain names in the LDAP hierarchy by using the o, ou, or dc LDAP attributes. An organization can contain sub-organizations.

• Directory Manager. The privileged Directory Server administrator, comparable to the root user in UNIX. The default Directory Manager DN is cn=Directory Manager but can be changed. During installation and configuration, you must supply the Directory Manager DN and password to make changes to the LDAP configuration.