Case Studies for Windows Domain/AD Integration

[speedbumpnv]

does anyone know of some articles or press releases about firms incorporating OSX into their windows environment, including binding the systems to the active directory?

i am trying to round up some information to present to company partners about the topic in hopes they will move in the Mac direction. there is support for the idea, they just want to see that it can be done easily and reliably.

thanks!

 

[PoitNarf]

Just found this through a quick google search, not sure if it has what you're looking for:

http://www.centrify.com/blogs/tomkemp/mac_windows_integration.asp

At my job we have a handful of macs joined to AD, but that only lets us use AD as a means of authenticating users that log in to the macs. If you want to do anything in relation to group policies or other administrative functions I am not aware of any way to do this directly with AD. Perhaps there may be some 3rd party options? It's not something we've really looked into around here. We have an Xserve that handles software deployments and netbooting/etc.

 

[bartzilla]

does anyone know of some articles or press releases about firms incorporating OSX into their windows environment, including binding the systems to the active directory?

i am trying to round up some information to present to company partners about the topic in hopes they will move in the Mac direction. there is support for the idea, they just want to see that it can be done easily and reliably.

thanks!

I'm not sure its' really newsworthy, I wrote a howto years ago for tiger in AD aimed at uk education but even then it wasn't difficult. We've been doing this for years. As mentioned already, it only really works for authentication, so you can't manage mac workstations via group policy objects (user settings for passwords, home folder settings can be managed by GPO, assuming the users are in AD).

If you want to manage the mac workstations via the network you need a mac server with Open Directory, and this does make things a little more complex - not outrageously so but it has to be considered.

 

[speedbumpnv]

Just found this through a quick google search, not sure if it has what you're looking for:

http://www.centrify.com/blogs/tomkemp/mac_windows_integration.asp

At my job we have a handful of macs joined to AD, but that only lets us use AD as a means of authenticating users that log in to the macs. If you want to do anything in relation to group policies or other administrative functions I am not aware of any way to do this directly with AD. Perhaps there may be some 3rd party options? It's not something we've really looked into around here. We have an Xserve that handles software deployments and netbooting/etc.

we are mainly looking for ways to avoid having to log into a windows machine if we use the Mac OS. as it stands now, our passwords expire ever so many weeks. at such time, everything stops working for us if we dont change the password. in windows, the login screen will prompt you. the only thing that tells us in the Mac environment that our password is expired is the fact out email no longer works and our access to the file server is down. at that point we have to launch a VM just to change the password. from what i gather, if we can bind to the AD, the Mac OS will prompt us to go into account setting and change our passwords there and have it propagate back to the AD and change our keychains on the Mac at the same time.