At the most fundamental level, every Linux server in your environment will require some degree of access for users. In an enterprise setting where there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of servers, a centralized user management system such as LDAP or Active Directory would be an ideal solution as, taking the examples of a user leaving or changing their password, they can do this in one place, and it is applied across all servers. We will explore this aspect of Enterprise Linux management and automation in the next section, Centralizing user account management with LDAP.
For now, though, let us concern ourselves with local account management—that is, accounts that are created on each and every Linux server where access is required. Even when a centralized solution such as LDAP is present, local accounts are still a requirement...