I'm in a somewhat similar situation. I currently run OpenLDAP and
Samba 3 and plan to upgrade hundreds of workstations to MS Windows 7.

I know I can get *nix to authenticate to AD. My concern is that AD
won't support the many additional data attributes I've added to my
OpenLDAP directory and I will lose my existing account management
tools. My, admittedly dated, experience with AD and it's account
management tools makes me think this is a step backward.

My question for the list:
Are there powerful account management tools for Active Directory that
can support a custom account lifecycle?

For example, if an applicant becomes a student there are several
account attributes and groups that need to be changed depending on
which program they enroll in; if that student withdraws, graduates,
becomes an employee, etc. there are other attributes that need
changing. What tools exist for AD that can make those changes with a
simple "update status"?

P.S.
I currently implement my lifecycle in a Ruby Rails application. Maybe
I could plug that into AD but I have no idea how difficult that would
be.

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Ski Kacoroski <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 01/23/2012 07:45 AM, Benjamin Shayne wrote:
>>
>> Our primary concern is the large number of Windows 7 clients that
>> would all need registry hacks to connect to a Samba domain. OpenLDAP
>> and Samba have been difficult to manage with upgrades breaking parts
>> of the system and with Windows 7 clients need retooling to connect.
>>
>
> Benjamin,
>
> Go with AD.  It works well for this purpose and you will not be fighting all
> the time to try and get MS clients to connect to it.  It is pretty easy to
> get linux to authenticate to AD (not sure about OpenSolaris).
>

-- 
Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard.
--Atom Powers--
_______________________________________________
Tech mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
 http://lopsa.org/

Reply via email to