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I'm trying to find a term...and its harder to find than I thought.

Given a group of computers are within a network boundary, and have a set of user accounts (system admins) setup to oversee computers within that network boundary, what is that cohesive group called?

From a windows AD point of view, its a 'domain', from a networking point of view, a single-network-boundary seems to be the term. But I'm talking from a generic, as in if there is a novell or other LDAP managed system rather than AD (or AWS IAM for example, with VPC as the network boundary), and a single collection of computers may still have many network netmasks/tiers where the app servers in one tier talk to database servers in another tier, but as (usually often) the case there is one set of management/sysadmin accounts that oversee them all.

(in the case of an app tier with one set of sysadmins, and a different db tier with their own sysadmins, this 'term' could also apply if there is a hard network boundary to cross).

Note that the focus is on the collection of servers, and the sysadmins who oversee them, keep them patched, work with various stakeholders with different software....not necessarily the 'network admin' if a single network admin manages the boundary of multiple 'domain/term/etc', only that the perceived understanding is that this collection of 'term-we-are-trying-to-find' is mostly self-contained.

Any thoughts or possibly other terms that have similar meaning/definition?

dhartford
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  • From the perspective of the network, this is known as an AS (Autonomous System). – Ron Maupin Apr 09 '16 at 18:19
  • @RonMaupin Not exactly. A company with a network which is too small to be an AS could still have their own team of administrators responsible for a segmented LAN and all the computers connected to it. There could easily be multiple such companies connected to the same ISP which mean they would be part of the same AS, but it would still be many separate networks with different administrators. – kasperd Apr 09 '16 at 20:23
  • I have seen the word *enterprise* used to describe the kind of entity you are asking about. I don't know if that is a common term. – kasperd Apr 09 '16 at 20:25
  • @kasperd, I'm not talking about registered AS numbers. I am referring to the AS concept, which precedes that: "_either a single network or a group of networks that is controlled by a common network administrator (or group of administrators) on behalf of a single administrative entity, also sometimes referred to as a routing domain._" – Ron Maupin Apr 09 '16 at 21:04

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This is an administrative boundary or area of responsibility - I don't think there is a boundary here except by policy. autonomous system is the network term (not single network-boundary), while domain is the authoritative and administrative. none of these boundaries consider humans.

Sum1sAdmin
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I see the term 'zone' used a lot here. "Production zone", "preproduction zone", "office zone", etc. These can cover multiple subnets, etc, but are logical groupings by AWS VPC, building, floor, lab, environment, etc.

Jason Floyd
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  • Upvoting as 'zone' for a generic possible answer, although this could be easily confusing as the term 'zone' is used for a variety of areas. Hopefully can find a term that is more precise (computer/network boundary) to avoid confusion and possible 'bikeshedding' by other stakeholders this is communicated with. – dhartford Apr 11 '16 at 13:47
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You could always take it down to the network level.. Segment. Network. However being a Windows SysAdmin I'd probably use either Segment or Domain 90% of the time.

Skeer
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In AZURE, resources that belong to a single entity called - Tenant.

Vick Vega
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  • Not sure what you're referring to, but... The only place Azure refers to "tenants" is with Active Directory, and that has nothing to do with resource boundaries within a network. Multi-tenancy in general is not Azure-specific, and again not directly related to network boundaries. – David Makogon Apr 09 '16 at 13:05
  • Tenancy usually has to do with multiple virtual machines running on the same physical hardware, and whether multiple customers are sharing that physical hardware or not. – Jason Floyd Apr 09 '16 at 18:11
  • Awesome feedback, however I see it slightly differently. Tenant term also exists in Office365, which you already guessed, defines a customer whose domain is hosted, at least for some service that Office365 provides. (roughly) From the angle I see it, you get all that @dhartford asks for, as well as all the services that both of you mentioned, as well as the one I said above. There's no discrepancy, just step back for min and see all those items as building blocks for what I like how MS defines it - a Tenant. – Vick Vega Apr 09 '16 at 19:21
  • yes, it's referred to as Tenant and multi-tenancy in cloud computing, Azure, AWS, OpenStack, all refer to this boundary as a tenant. – Sum1sAdmin Apr 09 '16 at 20:18