Tarantella Administration Guide > Before you begin > Objects and the organizational hierarchy

Objects and the organizational hierarchy

Tarantella is built on the principles of directory services:

• People, resources and the structure of your organization are represented by objects in a directory.
• Different types of object have different configuration settings, known as attributes.
• The relationships between objects are important and have meanings.
• Each object is identified using a unique name.

Types of object

Tarantella includes a number of different object types by default. (More types may be added if you install a Connectivity Pack.)

The set of objects available, and the attributes for each object, are collectively called the schema. Tarantella objects are based on the commonly used LDAP v3 schema. We've extended the objects, using the standard method of doing so, to support Tarantella functionality such as webtops and configurable connection types.

For more information on the LDAP schema, see RFC 2256.

These objects are available in the default installation of Tarantella:

• Organization
• Organizational unit
• Group
• Person
• Host
• Character application
• X application
• Windows application
• Document
• Active Directory container
• Domain component

Another object type, the profile object, helps make managing webtops easier for different types of user. For example, you can define a special webtop for users who log in to Tarantella anonymously.

Finally, role objects let you grant certain users special privileges. For example, the Global Administrators role object defines which users are Tarantella Administrators, who can run the Tarantella administration tools such as Object Manager.

Organizing your resources

You use objects to represent the different parts of your organization. Together, the objects form your organizational hierarchy.

The top level of the organizational hierarchy contains an object representing your organization. Within that, you create all the objects you need.

You can use organizational unit (OU) objects to subdivide your organization. For example, you might want to use an OU for each department in your organization. An OU can contain other OUs, to further subdivide your organization.

It's important to design your organizational hierarchy. Here are some tips:

• Arrange your organizational units to resemble departments. This way you can take advantage of the webtop inheritance of Tarantella to make managing webtops easy. If everyone in a department needs an application, then add the corresponding application object to the webtop for the organizational unit. By default, everyone belonging to an organizational unit inherits the OU's webtop.
• Don't nest too much, or too little. A very "flat" hierarchy makes management of webtops harder -- you can't use webtop inheritance. But a very "deep" hierarchy, with many nested OUs, may introduce other overheads, such as a requirement to move people between OUs much more often. The number of levels you need depends on the size and shape of your organization.
• Use a naming convention for each object type.
  • For person objects, we recommend you use the person's full name, for example "Indigo Jones".
  • For application and document objects, the object name is displayed on users' webtops.
• Use groups. A group is a collection of objects from anywhere in the organizational hierarchy. You might collect host objects together, for example, to relate all application servers on one site. Objects can be a member of more than one group.

To get started on your organizational hierarchy, learn about Object Manager.