The act of hooking-up a dishwasher is not unlike adding a Linux system to an existing enterprise IT environment. When you deploy a Linux system, it too needs to be “hooked-up”. As the data that flows through your environment consists of different kinds of objects (e.g. users, groups, hosts, and services) the associated identity information is not unlike the water in your dishwasher. Without this identity information(or, in the case of the dishwasher, without the water) your new machine is less than useful. Ensuring that your new system (or new dishwasher) is properly connected is important, if not essential.

Read more at the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Blog.