OSF DCE Administration Guide--Introduction

Global and Cell Considerations

2.2 The Cell Namespace

An integral part of planning for a DCE cell is understanding the organization of your cell

namespace. Consider the following as you plan the organization of a cell in your

network:

• Are security requirements maintained?

• Does the organization of the cell facilitate network trafﬁc where data sharing needs

are the greatest?

• How will you manage the administrative accounts created for each DCE service

during the conﬁguration process?

• What are your DFS administrative domains (groups of DFS servers that are

administered as a unit)? Can you group servers for more efﬁcient administration?

2.2.1 Determining Cell Boundaries

In DCE, the boundaries of a cell are equivalent to the boundaries of the cell namespace.

A small organization can consist of one cell. A large organization can have many cells.

The primary factors in determining a cell’s boundaries are the common purpose and trust

shared by the cell’s principals. Principals within a cell can belong to groups that share

the same privileges. Members of a group share the same level of trust and are authorized

to perform certain actions.

Because there is a set of administrative tasks associated with setting up and maintaining

each cell, it is reasonable to keep the number of cells in your organization to a minimum.

However, the level of trust shared by groups of principals is a more important

consideration than administrative overhead.

2.2.2 Keeping Cells Stable

Once you decide how many cells you need and where the boundaries of those cells will

be, make an effort to keep your cell structure stable. Servers are not easily moved from

one host to another, so be sure to plan your namespace structure carefully in order to

minimize reconﬁguration. If you do need to move a machine from one cell to another,

you must do the following:

• Use the dce_conﬁg REMOVE command to remove all conﬁguration data from the

machine (if the machine is a client machine, use the dce_conﬁg UNCONFIGURE

command to remove the client from the cell before using REMOVE).

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