Although CentraSite maintains its own database of user accounts, it authenticates users externally. By default, CentraSite authenticates users against the local operating system. However, this configuration is not suitable for an enterprise-wide implementation of CentraSite. When you deploy CentraSite for actual use within your enterprise, you will need to configure it to authenticate users against a production-quality authentication system such as Active Directory or an LDAP server. You must complete this configuration step before you begin creating organizations and setting up users, groups, and roles.

CentraSite allows you to define multiple user repositories for authentication, but only one is the default at any given time. Users whose user names reside in the default authentication system can log on to CentraSite with their user names. Users whose user names are not in the default authentication system must log on to CentraSite with their user names prefixed by the Domain ID that was defined for the respective authentication system.

If you are working in a distributed environment, where one or more Application Server Tiers and a separate registry/repository are involved, you must configure CentraSite to use an external authentication system. If you are working in a mixed Windows and UNIX environment, CentraSite can use Active Directory or LDAP as the user repository for both. If the CentraSite registry/repository is installed on a UNIX or Linux system, you can only use Active Directory as the user repository if it is configured via the LDAP interface.

When you configure CentraSite to use Active Directory or LDAP for user authentication, you map the user metadata (for example, name, phone number, email address) from the authentication system to the User object in CentraSite. CentraSite imports this metadata from the external directory when you create an account for a user in CentraSite.