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I'm setting up a new, small network. About 10 servers at 3 sites with just 3 users total. All are running RHEL 6.1. I was hoping to have centralized user management, especially having a single password to make our lives easier. Easy is the goal here. The three of us are developers without sysadmin skills.

The commercial Red Hat Directory Server was pointed out to me. It looks like it does what I want but it's expensive and is targeted at companies with thousands of servers and users.

I also found IPA, which Red Hat seems to have recently (as of 6.1) integrated as part of their "Enterprise Identity Management Guide" and is available via yum from their repos as ipa-server. I assume this is FreeIPA with the "Free" removed. This product might also do what I want. I get the impression it is newer and without strong commercial support I worry it will just make my life harder in the end.

It seems the old fashioned way to solve this was duct taping some sort of LDAP + PAM + whatever system. That sounds really messy for our small, inexperienced team.

So, the question: can anyone with experience compare and contrast RH Directory Server vs IPA? Is there a clear winner for my situation?

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IPA is an identity solution stack, of which the following is included:

  • LDAP
  • Kerberos
  • NTP
  • DNS

Red Hat Directory Server is just a LDAP implementation - which, incidentally, is based on Fedora 389 Directory Server, which, in turn, is included in IPA.

Incidentally, IPA in RHEL 6.1 is included as a technology preview. IPA is expected to turn gold and given full support with RHEL 6.2 release.

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Thanks. Have I overlooked a better alternative, or is the best non-beta solution stitching this stack together myself? I'm tempted to use IPA anyway because that sounds daunting. – RaveTheTadpole Dec 1 '11 at 6:17
If you are not going to use it for evaluation, its fine. In fact, you can try it now by downloading from freeipa.org, since it is essentially the same product. – Rilindo Dec 1 '11 at 13:35
Will this filter into the CentOS 6.2 side, or is it an entitled package? – ewwhite Jan 20 at 17:05
It is in CentOS 6.2. Just look for ipa-server-2.1.3-9.el6.x86_64.rpm in any of your favorite CentOS 6.2 mirrors. – Rilindo Jan 20 at 19:17
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