AppleMac Servers / Win2k3 servers

superplay · 4 Jun 2008 at 09:46

Hi Folks

We have 40 or so Mac Computers that currently operate in a standalone configuration and we are looking to add these to our main networking infrastructure.

Is the best way forward to purchase a MAC server and then add this into the existing Windows AD? Or just add these to Active Directory without a MAC server?

What are the advantages of having a MAC server over just adding the clients directly to AD?

Cheers

LordSplodge · 4 Jun 2008 at 11:54

Firstly:

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/

So as you can see the Xserve + OS X Server can do far more than just AD.

As for adding the client to AD directly, sure that would work but they would have to authorise every time they wanted to access network resources rather than be authenticated at login via the XServe and its hooks into your AD.

I had one at my previous employer acting as an AD link for the Macs. It was also a QuickTime Streaming Media Server and a Podcast Server.

Nice kit.

epswat · 4 Jun 2008 at 15:35

Another opinion!
There is nothing stopping you from binding your Mac Clients into AD. However aside from Single Point sign in, there is not a lot else you could do.
Policy Management is a pain unless you use a 3rd party tool.
So are roaming profiles and home directories.
Personally, I would not go down the route of integrating Open Directory with Active directory.
OD is fine is you know what you are doing and are prepared to babysit the directory, however it is fragile compared to Active Directory and will give you no end of problems unless you are very familiar with OD.

Best case senario is to bind the Macs into AD using the default Apple directory binder, and leave them with kerborised single point sign in.
If you need any further functionality then I would suggest checking out a product called Centrify, which allows for group policy management of mac clients.

Elliott

superplay · 5 Jun 2008 at 14:43

Thanks for the info

LordSplodge · 5 Jun 2008 at 15:01

epswat said:
Another opinion!
There is nothing stopping you from binding your Mac Clients into AD. However aside from Single Point sign in, there is not a lot else you could do.
Policy Management is a pain unless you use a 3rd party tool.
So are roaming profiles and home directories.
Personally, I would not go down the route of integrating Open Directory with Active directory.
OD is fine is you know what you are doing and are prepared to babysit the directory, however it is fragile compared to Active Directory and will give you no end of problems unless you are very familiar with OD.

Best case senario is to bind the Macs into AD using the default Apple directory binder, and leave them with kerborised single point sign in.
If you need any further functionality then I would suggest checking out a product called Centrify, which allows for group policy management of mac clients.

Elliott

I thought Open Directory in 10.5 was supposed to work better. I had the problems you stated in 10.4 (as in the OD was somewhat flaky) but left the company just before 10.5 Server was released and my new employer has no macs but did get it working to a point.

Good post though and I agree with you suggestions. Centrify is a good piece of software.