Planning and Deployment Guide

Most large-scale deployments rely on a project team to design and articulate a project plan, and team members take on specific roles and responsibilities. Depending on your role and responsibilities, you may want to read portions of this guide selectively.

Most of the information in this guide applies to all platforms. However, there are some deployment scenarios and tasks that are unique to Mac OS X computers. If you manage Mac OS X computers and users, refer to the Administrator's Guide for Mac for additional information.

The guide provides the following information:

Planning Deployment for an Enterprise provides an overview of key concepts and the deployment lifecycle, including suggestions for who should participate in the planning process and factors to consider that will affect your deployment strategy.
Architecture and Basic Operations describes the key components of the Server Suite software architecture and how the components work together to provide authentication and authorization services.
Deployment Process Overview provides an overview of the steps involved in a deployment project and a preview of the tasks you can expect to complete.
Planning organizational units and security groups discusses the Active Directory objects and organizational model that is recommended to ensure a separation of duties for UNIX administrators.
Installing Authentication & Privilege Services provides step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring Server Suite software components on Windows computers.
Installing Agents on Computers to be Managed describes the installation options available and provides instructions for installing Server Suite software components on UNIX and Linux computers.
Planning to use Server Suite zones describes the importance of zones and how you can use classic and hierarchical zone for identity management, access control, and delegated administration.
Preparing To Migrate Existing Users And Groups describes the steps to take to prepare for migrating existing users and groups, including collecting and analyzing existing profile information and creating the first zone.
Migrating Existing Users To Hierarchical Zones describes how to import and migrate an existing user population into hierarchical zones and enable authentication using Active Directory and Server Suite software.
Joining Computers to a Domain and Zone describes how to complete the initial migration by joining the Active Directory domain and a Server Suite zone.
Provisioning New User and Group Profiles After Migration describes how to use the Zone Provisioning Agent and Active Directory groups to automate provisioning of new users and groups.
Validating Operations After Deploying provides suggestions for formal testing and validation activities you can perform to move from a pilot deployment to a production environment.
Defining Role-Based Access for Users and Computers describes the most common roles that organizations create to complete the initial deployment and how to configure the appropriate rights and assign the roles to appropriate groups.
Migrating And Managing Service Accounts describes the strategies you can use if you want to migrate local service accounts to Active Directory to improve security for those accounts.
Planning to Deploy in a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) describes how to deploy Server Suite components to allow communication between a perimeter (DMZ) zone and an internal zone.
Managing and Evolving Operations After Deployment describes management activity for operations staff and additional services you may want to implement after deployment as you evolve the Server Suite software solution.
Templates and Sample Forms provides examples of common documents and notification messages that you can customize and use throughout the deployment process.
Permissions Required for Administrative Tasks provides information about the specific Active Directory permissions required to perform administrative tasks on objects specific to Server Suite.