You can host network accounts on your server. Hosting network accounts on your server makes it an Open Directory server, also known as an Open Directory master. To set up an Open Directory server, see Provide Open Directory service.
There are a few reasons to host network accounts on your server:
Your organization has a network account server, also known as a directory server, and you want people to use their existing network accounts with your server. Your server must be a network account server in order to import users from an existing network account server.
You plan to have multiple servers and want each user to have one network account that works with all your servers.
You want to use Profile Manager to manage Mac computers with OS X and iOS devices such as iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
If you don’t host network accounts on your server, accounts you create on your server are local accounts. When you host network accounts on your server, you can create network accounts in the Server app, or create local accounts in System Preferences.
Other servers can import network accounts hosted on your server. When another server imports an account from your server, a user with an imported account can use services from other servers but still use the user name and password stored on your server.
Accounts you create in the Server app prior to setting up your server to host network accounts are local accounts.