FreeIPA is a Red Hat

Red Hat

Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

 sponsored open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 project which aims to provide an easily managed Identity, Policy and Audit (IPA) suite primarily targeted towards networks of Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 and Unix computers. FreeIPA can be compared to Novell

Novell

Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...

's Identity Manager

Novell Identity Manager

Novell Identity Manager is Novell's implementation of Identity Management software. Previously known as DirXML the product utilizes XML-based configuration files to determine the product's implemented functions...

 or Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

's Active Directory

Active Directory

Active Directory is a directory service created by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems. Server computers on which Active Directory is running are called domain controllers....

 in that the goals and mechanisms used are similar.

FreeIPA currently uses 389 Directory Server for its LDAP implementation and MIT's Kerberos 5 for authentication and single sign-on

Single sign-on

Single sign-on is a property of access control of multiple related, but independent software systems. With this property a user logs in once and gains access to all systems without being prompted to log in again at each of them...

. This year FreeRADIUS

FreeRADIUS

FreeRADIUS is a modular, high performance free RADIUS suite developed and distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2, and is free for download and use...

 and Samba

Samba (software)

Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...

 are also to be included in the FreeIPA solution.

While each of the major components of FreeIPA is a pre-existing open source project it is the bundling of these components into a single manageable suite that make FreeIPA more comparable to its proprietary software cousins, Identity Manager and Active Directory

Active Directory

Active Directory is a directory service created by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems. Server computers on which Active Directory is running are called domain controllers....

.

FreeIPA aims to provide support not just for Linux and Unix based computers but ultimately Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

and Apple Macintosh computers also.