Adding a Mac to ADS? Reasons?

[New2Mac06]

Before I start to add the 2 mac mini's that my business currently has to the Active Directory (Windows 2003 Server), i would like to know what benefits I would have by adding them to AD. I understand they will be able to be an object, however....Is there a main benefit?

I was told that you can not apply Group Policies to them, and that really...there is no point.

So I came to you guys, to find out why and what benefits would adding the mac's to the server give me.

Thanks for everything.
-Feel free to move this if it is in the wrong forum-

[nixgeek]

I haven't played too much with it, but I believe that you can use the accounts resident in Active Directory to log into the Macs. As for more detailed control of what you can do, you might have to look into ADmitMac from Thursby Software.

[bobw]

Or read some of Apple's docs on Active Directory

[New2Mac06]

thanks a lot. any more input from users who have expiereining with doing anything in this type of situation?

[bobw]

Apple's Forum has a lot of posts on Active Directory also.

[HastaLaVista]

Here are some reasons why I did:

1. For the heck of it. Needed something to do.
2. 'Have quite a few AD users. I don't have to create individual accounts locally. With the Mac part of AD, anyone with an AD account can explore the Mac invironment.
3. Resources: File & Print Servers -No need to re-authencate to those resources. Just point, click, and away you go.

As far as AD GPOs, I have not explored it fully. Mainly, it's not in the high priority list. I started to but too many issues with Windows that needs to be maintained. -Not that I'm complaining or anything. I love job security. A Mac admin guy fixing PC networks and such... -What a resume'. So I haven't really found or created GPOs for the Mac, nor have I found an Admin Template. Some of the links sources that have been suggested are a good start.

Good luck and...

hastalaVista!!!

[nixgeek]

I will most likely be doing this myself at the schools I work at. Going to create a clone of one of the machines (probably with SuperDuper) and have them joined into the Active Directory tree. I'm going to see about upgrading the Macs to Tiger or Panther at the very least and bumping up the RAM. I'll let you all know how that goes.

[Tommo]

I have over 50 Macs of varying varietities linked to to an AD structure. In a multi user environment such as a school where you may have many users using each machine it means that a single network account can be used to log on rather than either a generic account on each machine, or much more time consuming creating individual accounts on each Mac for your users.

It also helps access to network based file and print services. Under Panther I used AdmitMac as a method of connection, but since upgrading to Tiger the in-built AD integration seems to work well.