Before You Begin

Before you configure the directory service to support a virtual host, you should plan for or implement the parts of the virtual host not related to the directory.

The first step in the configuration is registering a domain name and assigning an IP address. If you plan to use a Sun Internet FTP Servervirtual FTP site, you must assign a unique IP address to the virtual host to be used for FTP. If you do not require a virtual FTP site with domain-specific users, you may be able to use name based virtual hosting (where several domain names share the same IP address).

You must decide whether the virtual domain has subscribers and how they will use the system. The way that subscribers can log into the virtual host (or not) affects how you refer authentication requests in the directory and how you configure the location of virtual host data on disk.

Often a virtual host does not have unique subscribers (subscribers are authenticated in the domain of the hosting ISP or the subscribers do not actually store content at the ISP); in this case you may decide to ignore subscriber information or refer to a subscriber base (an ou=People node) that is not specific to the virtual host. In this case, you only need to plan the location of the virtual host data on disk and configure services accordingly.

Sometimes a virtual host requires only a single point of contact. An administrator from the customer's organization is the only person who actually logs in to store or remove data from a web site or FTP site. In this case, you may want to create a subscriber base unique to the virtual host, but in which the user's "home directory" is the root of the virtual web or FTP site rather than a personal directory.

Some virtual domains contain subscribers who are unique to that domain, who are not ISP subscribers, and who have personal web or FTP areas (for example, a small business that has its intranet hosted at your ISP). In this case, you will need to create a root directory for the FTP and web sites and a location for user personal directories. The virtual domain in the OSI tree will require an ou=People node with its own subscribers, and the hosts in the DC tree will point to this node to authenticate users. Each user entry will have an ispContentDirectory attribute naming the location of the personal directory for FTP and web site access.

Finally, if any subscriber will log in to the domain to store Sun Internet FTP Server data or Sun WebServer site content, you will need to create an ispService entry in the OSI tree that names the location of the content. The ispService object class ispDirectoryRoot attribute determines what part of the file system will be available to users when they authenticate in the virtual domain. If there are many subscribers with personal directories, you will want to designate a personal directory in each user's ispContentDirectory attribute.