Having a local user account and password defined on each server and workstation for your access is not really practical. Imagine trying to enforce password changes when you may have to implement the change on 10 or 12 systems that you may use. You may also wish to consider what happens when a user leaves; do you really think the account will be deleted from every system each time? The reality is that where multiple systems are placed, some form of directory solution must be in place; this may be means of OpenLDAP, or even Active Directory. Yes, CentOS can join a Windows domain. We will look at 389-ds, the CentOS implementation of the Red Hat Directory Server. 389-ds is based on OpenLDAP, but with some pretty smart management tools. We are going to cover the following topics in this chapter: