A common configuration for on-premises Linux servers includes using an LDAP directory to manage identities and for user authentication. This approach has been a de-facto standard and best practice for more than a decade. But LDAP directories have posed challenges to administrators and security professionals. There is a better way to manage Linux identities, without relying on LDAP. In the beginning, there was Linux. The operating system was based on UNIX and gained wide adoption as an alternative to Windows servers. Linux maintains identities in local files (i.e., /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow), and it is easy to manage identities in a single Linux server. But organizations don’t have a single Linux server. As you add multiple Linux servers, managing identities in the multiple servers becomes more challenging. This is due to the fact that Linux servers do not share identities from server to server. Each server is a stand-alone island of identities.