Many applications, such as print servers and backup software, were written for NetWare versions previous to NetWare 4. These applications used the NetWare bindery instead of NDS for network access and object manipulation.

The bindery is a flat database of objects such as Users, Groups, and Volumes known to a given server. The bindery is server-specific and server-centric.

Older NetWare client software (such as the NETX bindery shell) used a bindery login procedure in which a user logged in to a specific server only. Access to multiple servers required multiple logins using multiple user accounts.

NDS allows applications written for a bindery to function using bindery services. Bindery services allows you to set an NDS context or a number of contexts (up to 12) as an NDS server's virtual bindery. The context you set is called the server's bindery context.

Following are some important facts about bindery services:

• To use bindery services, you must set a bindery context for the NDS server.
• Not all objects map to bindery objects. Many objects, such as Alias objects, do not have a bindery equivalent.
• Most bindery applications have been upgraded to work with NDS. Check with your application vendor to get the newest version.
• Each NDS server with a bindery context must hold a master or read/write replica of the partition that includes the bindery context.