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What is “standalone” vs. “workgroup” vs. “domain”?

April 26, 2017domain standalone vs workgroup

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What is “standalone” vs. “workgroup” vs. “domain”?

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Each NT workstation participates in either a workgroup or a domain. Most companies will have NT workstations participate in a domain for management of the resource by the administrator. A domain is one or more servers running NT server with all of the servers functioning as a single system. The domain not only contains servers, but NT workstations, Windows for Workgroups machines, and even LAN Manager 2.x machines. The user and group database covers ALL of the resources of a domain. Domains can be linked together via trusted domains. The advantage of trusted domains is that a user only needs one user account and password to get to resources across multiple domains, and administrators can centrally manage the resources. A workgroup is simply a grouping of workstations that do not belong to a domain. A standalone NT workstation is a special case workgroup. User and group accounts are handled differently between domain and workgroup situations.