OpenLDAP design decision

[chuck@atnr.com]

I am trying to decide if I should use Zimbra's OpenLDAP for other authentication services for my users (here I will have more accounts in OpenLDAP than actual mailbox users)

or to use an external OpenLDAP server for authentication of Zimbra services. If anyone has experience with eith of these options I would like to know if there were issues.

Would additional openLDAP accounts in the Zimbra openLDAP server count toward my Zimbra licenses?

Is there a place you can point me to get the correct Zimbra schema configured in an external openLDAP server to be used by Zimbra?

[phoenix]

My preference is always to keep those two functions separate. You can certainly authenticate Zimbra users against an external LDAP without problems (although they must be provisioned in the Zimbra LDAP as well) and use another instance of LDAP for the additional users/services.

[gettyless]

The way I have mine setup is to authenticate externally - this is good so if I have to take it down, people can still authenticate to get to other services (i.e. svn, samba, etc).