Overview - Introduction to DCE for Administrators

As the Introduction to OSF DCE explains, DCE is a set of services that together make up a high-level coherent environment for developing and running distributed applications. These services include a set of tools that support DCE management tasks. DCE applies techniques that you may have learned from working with applications for single machines or other distributed systems. These techniques enable system administrators to manage DCE without having to know about system internals. You can start with a configuration that is appropriate for your initial needs and grow to larger configurations without sacrificing reliability or flexibility. DCE supports large networks with many users, as well as smaller networks.

The following concepts, which are described in the remaining topics, are central to DCE system administration:

· Clients and servers to make and respond to requests for a service

· Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) for client-to-server communications

· Cells, which are groups of users, servers, and machines that share security, administrative, and naming boundaries

· A single namespace that lets client applications identify, locate, and manage objects, including users, machines, servers, groups of servers, and directories

· A single filespace that allows data sharing among users and machines with proper authorization

· Principals, which are entities - including users, servers, and computers - that are capable of communicating securely with other entities

· Access control lists (ACLs) to control access to objects

· Caching, which is the technique of using a local copy of information to avoid looking up the centrally stored information each time it is needed

· Replication, which is the process by which copies of information are created and kept consistent