50/50 OSX / Windows Network.

[the_duff]

Hi all,

This is the first post for me on this forum, so first let me introduce myself.
For the last 7 years I have worked as an IT / Business Equipment Tech. During this time I have worked on many Windows networks and I have become quite confident in what I can and can't do for a customer depending on how many dollars they have to spend.

Several years ago, I was required to setup an old A1 film printer that used a Mac OS8 print server to talk to a Windows workgroup and an OSX 10.? workstation.
This intergration required a stack of research in OSX and OS8, but I got it to work and due to the time spent to learn OSX, I actually found that OSX was a brilliant platform.

A year ago I discovered a distro DVD of OSX that would work on my HP notebook.
After much more study and playing around, I successfully installed OSX on my notebook and I now run two HDDs, one with OSX and the other with Windows.

This interest in OSX landed me a new job as an IT tech at a local school.
The school is a mixed OS network with about 50 PCs and 50 Apples.
The previous tech of the school was VERY pro PC and ignored the fact that there was Macs on the network.
There is now 3 Windows 2003 servers holding up a domain.
While the existing domain is rather poorly setup I have managed to sort most faults out, but the Apples have been causing me a lot of grief as they require me to go to all of them individually to maintain them.

I decided to give the school's old G4 dual processor server a new breath of life and give it birthday present of a copy of 10.4.8 server.

After a busy week, I have managed to setup SUS and multicast network installations of a working image to 20 new IMac Intel Core 2 Duos.

So to sum up what I am trying to do here is integrate the Macs into a pro Windows network enviroment.

What I wish to do is utilise the management abilities of an OSX server, while leaving the domain to let the XP machines to do what they do.

Currently all the Macs on the network are unmanaged. They all logon with the username of 'student', and then the user is required to enter their samba username and password to acess the data storage of the win2003 server.

Should I work on adding the Macs to the Active directory, or use the OSX server to replicate the AD and work with an Open directory for the macs?

How can I easily get the Macs to be managed by the OSX server?

I need a solution that will allow me to limit the rights that the students have of the Macs but intergrate easily into the Windows domain.

I will consider ANY ideas!

What is the next direction that I need to travel in to provide a great 50/50 network?


Thanks for your time,

Regards,

Jamie

 

[Go3iverson]

Well, you probably won't be replicating AD to OD...OD cannot be an AD controller. It can be a PDC/BDC, but that's a whole different conversation!

If you have all of your user information in AD, you may as well go with it, if you are comfortable with it. Create an Open Directory Master (and preferably include a Replica as well) and integrate that with your existing Active Directory. You can then manage your OS X machines at the Group and Machine level, using AD accounts and OD groups (or just plain old OS X machine accounts in OD on their own). You can then setup your client management settings and publish things like SUS and so forth from a centralized console.

You can also integrate the OS X Server to join the AD Kerberos Realm, allowing you to provide single sign-on across platforms. Integrate the clients into both the AD and the OD and you'll be set!

Michael