A New-Style Domain Integrating Management of Windows and UNIX

Abstract

With the broad application of UNIX and its descendants in recent years, heterogeneous network environment is a must to maximize the enterprise's freedom of choice. However, because of different accounts formats and authentication mechanisms of various operating system (OS), heterogeneous network environment also increases difficulties for system management and security implementation. Facing the situation, this paper proposes a HSMD (heterogeneous system management domain) domain to embody both Windows and UNIX. The domain is based on lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) to solve the conflict in account storing modes of different OS and realizes interoperation between Microsoft extended Kerberos protocol and standard Kerberos protocol. At last, the paper states that the scheme proposed has advantages of security, reliability, flexibility and adaptability.