The cell is the basic unit of operation in DCE. A cell is a collection of objects: users, machines, applications, and other resources that use DCE and that are administered as a unit. Resources are objects requiring a name or factors that influence how a cell administrator might name an object, including:
· People (including their skills, expertise, and potential for doing the work)
· Buildings (one or more facilities in one or more locations)
· Money (funding to set up and run the cell's environment)
· Computer hardware (workstations, PCs, printers, Ethernet cables, and so on)
· Computer software (servers, networks, nodes, file systems, applications, and so on)
· Network topology (the way the cell connects its computers and other machines to network resources (LANs, WANs, and so on)
Cells vary in size from a single-machine cell with a handful of users in one building to a cell with several hundred machines and thousands of users spanning several physical locations.