If Your Network Needs a Bindery

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 a context or a number of contexts as a server's virtual bindery. The context you set is called a server's bindery context.

Following are some important facts about bindery services:

• To use bindery services, you must set a bindery context for the server.
• Not all NDS objects map to bindery objects. Many NDS 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 server (before NetWare 5) with a bindery context must hold a master or read/write replica of the partition that includes the bindery context.