eDirectory (former NDS - Novell Directory Services) is currently version 8.7. So what's new? Well, you can run it on many platforms now, including
Linux and
Windows in addition to Netware. Having almost 10 years experience in
catalogue services, you can kind of trust it to be stable. From version 4.10 and up to today’s Novell
Netware OS version 6, it's been mainly used for authenticating a large number of users to a system from which you can have access to Netware Volumes and
Printers, mainly. This has changed the last few years where various technologies have been developed both by Novell and third party vendors to utilize the directory in other ways.
Single Sign-On (SSO) and secure
authentication methods are some of the popular ones. (Nowadays a consolidated product named SecureLogin incorporates Single Sign-On). SSO means you can use your
eDirectory user ID to automatically log into any other system with those credentials. Since that means that your eDir
user ID would be a single point of attack (once
compromized, it would give access to any other system as well), it is even more important to secure the user login to the
tree. That could be done by using some kind of
biometrical authentication in addition to the usual
password.
The administration tools have also improved. I thought Netware Administrator was a mess, but then came
ConsoleOne (the
Java based eDir/NDS management tool introduced with
Netware 5.1), and I started begging for mercy. Java serves many good purposes, where speed is not one of them. Finally iMonitor arrived, which is a web based management tool for Netware servers, eDirectory and other Novell products. The drawback is that you still have to use all three of them since not all features can be administered from iMonitor only (for instance full
NDPS support is lacking).