LANs to WANs: The Complete Management Guide

Servers on many LANs have a bindery or registry, which is used for security and accounting. It contains the names and passwords of users and groups of users authorized to log in to a particular server or set of servers. It also holds information about other services provided by the server to the client, such as printers, modems, and gateways. On a NetWare LAN, for example, a bindery agent allows the administrator to monitor information stored in the NetWare bindery. The information reported includes the following:

• Server identifiers (names) and type;

• User login IDs and full names;

• User access rights such as read, write, open, create, delete;

• Maximum connections allowed per server;

• Maximum volumes per server.

By tracking this information, the LAN administrator can determine such things as the times of peak use for each server and the login locations of users. The following types of bindery information can be displayed at the NetWare administrator’s console:

• Servers: Identifies each server, server revision and version number, number of connections supported, maximum number of volumes, and system fault tolerance (SFT) and transaction tracking service (TTS) levels.

• Users: Displays user information, such as login status and maximum number of connections and disk space allowed.

• Groups: Lists groups and users on each server.

• Group supervisors: Lists supervisors for groups on each server.

• Trustees: Lists server users, the directory to which the user or group has rights, and the rights assigned to each user.

• Login locations: Lists users restricted to logging in at particular stations and the stations allowed.

When the LAN administrator chooses a view, the bindery agent begins scanning the type of bindery information specified. A progress message shows the type of data that is currently being scanned. When the agent has scanned all the attached servers, the information is displayed on the console. Data is only displayed for servers to which the LAN administrator’s console is attached. If more than one person is administering the network, administrator rights can be assigned for their areas of responsibility at the time of system configuration. The information they view is determined by their administrator rights on each server. For example, an administrator on Server 2 can view the users and their file access rights on that server. But, if the administrator browses user information on Server 1, user IDs are displayed, but not file access rights.