3.1. Domain concept

The domain concept is the most important concept in an IT environment operated with UCS. The domain concept offers a way to centrally manage an IT environment where administrators can map their organization’s structure to the IT environment.

Simplified, an IT environment consists of computer systems and users. Systems offer services that provide capability. Users use capability. A domain is a single trust context that groups one or more entities like computer systems or users. The domain offers special services called domain services to systems and users. Fig. 3.1 shows the relationship between the actors systems, services, and users.

Fig. 3.1 Relationship of the systems, services and users in a domain

A trust context uses roles, permissions, and cryptography certificates to ensure secure communication between the domain participants. Domain services and domain participants can rely on the shared trust context when secure and mutually authenticated communication is required.

One key participant in a domain is the identity, a digital representation for persons. An identity represents an account for a user in a domain. It holds information like for example username and password for login. Furthermore, it contains various data associated to the user like for example group memberships, permissions, and different attributes used by services.

User accounts are organized in groups and users can belong to multiple groups. User groups help administrators to apply permissions for domain services to users and are essential to the organization’s structure to the domain administration.

All the objects in a domain need to be managed and organized. In a domain a central database called domain database registers all objects, like for example user identities, computer systems, printers, and file shares. See Fig. 3.2 for a graphical interpretation. The database stores the objects in a hierarchical tree-like structure. One or more central systems store the central database and are called domain node.

Fig. 3.2 Central domain database with different objects

UCS is a system that operates the central database for the domain. UCS is the central platform that implements the domain concept and helps administrators to manage and organize the IT environment for their organization. For the distinct roles of UCS systems in a domain, see the role concept.