LOL!!
One main difference before anything else...
NDS existing and is on its 7th version.
AD does not exist for another year.
Put it another way: NDS is RealWare and AD is ChartWare.
Beyond that, there is a ton of differences even if one compares NDS to MSFT's AD Chartware.
NDS is based on a truely federated tree and its objects are very independant to each other. AD will still be based on Domains. Therefor, even though they will be putting a lot on top to cover up the Domains, many of the domain limitations will exist.
NDS v7 (the current release) can scale to 8 million objects. NDS v8 (released later this year) will scale to 100's of millions of objects. AD, when it ever comes out will only scale to 10 million objects. Not large enough for large scale Internet driven solutions.
NDS is 6+ years old and has a ton of maturity behind it. It has gain a ton of industry acceptance and has over 40 million nodes already in place. It also has been ported to multiple OS platforms: NetWare, NT, Solaris, AIX, OS/390, and Linux. It has been integrated into countless other technologies including: router/switching, firewall, messaging, ERP, SNA, management, etc.
When MSFT AD rears head into the market (the no one still knows how much of its chartware will actually remain as real delivered functionality) it will be on its first release. It will run on an OS that is also an immature and unstable product. It will not have the cross-platform OS support other than NT (I ask you if you will see AD on OS/390, Linux, NetWare, AIX, Solaris). It has only a few ISV/OEM commited partners: like Cisco (who have also commited to NDS). It will take several years for it to mature.
Another major difference. When AD comes out, NDS will be able to fully swallow an AD tree and manage it transparently to the MSFT client environment. Similar to the way NDS can fully swallow MSFT domains and manage them inside NDS while still providing NATIVE MSFT Domain support to the users and services that need access from Domains. Also, NDS can jst as easily put AD or Domains back into its original state (i.e. - NDS releases its management of Domains/AD) in the matter of minutes.
AD will not be able to swallow an NDS tree. It will - at best - be able to migrate an NDS tree to AD. This means that there is no turning back for the customer that makes such a commitment.
NDS is and will conitue to commit to Open Standards that allow full Internet usability. The head developers of NDS are even on the LDAP/LDUP committees and NOVL heads up the LDUP committee. We all know MSFT's stand on Open Standards - if they can discourage or mutate or destroy these open standards, then they will.
Cheryl, I am only showing you the tip of the iceburg with these differences. If you want a much more detailed description, there are great sites to look at the go into great detail the differences between the two Directory Services.
Hope that help a bit.
Toy |
