What is a Catalog Server: Find Global Catalog Server

What is a Catalog Server: Article Summary

This hub will give you the meaning and definition of a catalog server and answers to the questions about the global catalog servers, where does catalog server used for as well as give you the list of examples of a catalog server.

There are really so much to learn in this world. Researching about Catalog Server especially for the beginners who occasionally hear this word is a bit frustrating. The resources are so many that sometimes your query is still left with a question mark, what is really a catalog server? So in this hub, I will mostly focus on what Catalog Server really is. Catalog server is another kind of server, which especially functions as the one which indexes the information inside the domain’s active directory, which includes different objects and data’s. Often, those which have catalog servers are large domains or those which has a large network with lots of information and data’s in their Active Directory. Using a Catalog server, the user will have the opportunity to search easily and effectively despite of its vastness, because the indexes are centralized on the catalog server. By doing this, the network traffic would decrease and the speed within the network prior to exchanging information would increase. So, instead the user would search from one domain to another domain of a large network just for a specific information, the catalog server will make it easy for every user to access the information he/she wants to have. In short, catalog server is mainly used for a centralized and effective indexing and searching.

Large websites or network like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Facebook and others has their own Global catalog servers even Hubpages. This allows their users to search fast according to what they are looking for. Google also offered their a Catalog Application that indexes the products within their network for the buyers and give them the opportunity to install it on their own devices. So that the buyers and supporters of its Network’s product would easily find what he/she wants to buy. Ebay and Amazon is a good example too about having a global catalog server that serves their user excellently and displays related keywords in hope that it is what the buyers are searching. Search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo are excellent example too of demonstrating on the use of global catalog server. Their caching and indexing of webpages to include in their active directory is enough to understand the function of a global catalog server.

Other uses of Global Catalog Server is to minimize the time and make the action as fast as possible especially if the admin decided to upgrade all the objects in its active directory for maintenance and new features. Like what the Microsoft is doing, they have an active directory which has a global catalog server that provides them information on the statistics within their forest (devices inside the active directory) and help them do the task easily. If they have new updates that needs to be done, they need not to visit the objects in their forest one by one to update it, thanks to Active Directory and global catalog servers. They do it all at once. Very much related with the Google Algorithm updates every now and then; it is a reality that it is not hard for Google at all to perform an update despite of its large network.