HI all,
Im facing a workload of around 50 systems that are being used by clients. Some of the clients are moving around between the systems and have been accessing their data via a network drive. After looking at the situation a windows active directory server would look to be the way to go to allow them to have their own user accounts and access to network locations when they log on. Is there anything bad about making a active directer y server?
thanks
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Assuming Windows clients, Active Directory is going to be the way to go.
yep, forgot to mention that!
there are a few Gnome systems too. Is there a active directory style bit of software for linux?
Thanks @Levitance ill give Active Directory a go
There are some pieces of software out there that are meant to attach LInux boxen to Active Directory, but I find them to be jarringly un-Linux like. I'll see if I can dig up a good walkthrough for associating a Linux box to AD. It's not terribly difficult as AD (Active Directory: Directory Services) is LDAP with Microsoft bits added on.
But for Linux boxen what you might consider doing is just having an NFS share of home directories, and have fstab mount nfs://yourNAS/home to /home and poof, you've got network home directories. It would still be nice to have the Linux boxen talk to AD though, for the user management portion of the service.
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+100000000
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If it is done right, it works great.
I manage a Domain at work. Things not to do: Don't make the local domain the same as an external domain. Don't build multiple domain controllers unless you can make sure they stay in sync correctly.
Things to do: Setup Roaming Profiles correctly. Roaming Profiles is basically if someone logs onto a new machine, their files will come with them. There are 3 different ways to make that happen. Don't do all 3. Only 1 needs to be setup depending on what you need.
For example, I can login to any workstation and my desktop, with all my files, are there.
The three ways you do it, each does it a different way. One way syncs the files manually to every workstation upon login. One way just makes their Desktop and other user folders as directly on a central server and you access them there. And the last way doesn't make their files available everywhere.
I highly recommend the 2nd way, where the user folders are actually shares from a central server. Less network congestion, but if the network is down at all, they can't access their files, but I think you have bigger problems then.
The first way uses up disk space on workstations fast, and creates long logins as the files sync.
The third way is fine if the users keep their files on a server anyway.
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@jjackstar1 Well, looks like @Vitalius & @Levitance have dropped some golden nuggets for you to mull over. Very good implementation and practice.
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thank you for this info! now its time to set it up and give it a go! Brilliant information in their, thanks again @Vitalius
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