Administration Guide › About Directories › What Is a Directory? › Data in a Directory Can Be Distributed and Replicated › Distribution

Previous Topic: Data in a Directory Can Be Distributed and Replicated

Next Topic: Replication
Distribution

Distribution is important for scaling.

Similar to the World Wide Web, distribution lets any number of servers share and maintain their own information. However, unlike the World Wide Web, directory hosts have a server-to-server protocol that enables them to cooperate to provide distributed queries and a unified view of the whole directory information tree.

This means that even though a directory information tree might appear to be a single entity, it may actually be split and stored in separate places.

The following diagram shows how one directory service is distributed across three namespaces:

A single namespace that is distributed across three locations