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Windows to Linux Migration in the Enterprise?

Posted by Cliff on from the a-mission-critical-move dept.

youngerpants asks: "There is a lot of talk at the moment about migrating applications from WIN32 to Linux. This certainly helps move the OSS movement along, however, the true test of Linux is in the enterprise. Whereas we can move applications, how can the enterprise itself (such as Active Directory to Open LDAP, Exchange Server to Sendmail and NTFS to Samba) be moved. Have Slashdot readers used any applications or followed any strategies to migrate their enterprise? How would you tackle an obviously risky migration?"

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wrong examples by Noksagt · · Score: 2, Interesting
    AD to OpenLDAP doesn't go, because OpenLDAP is just a directory protocol -- I wish people would start to understand that. There is no directly usable management interface, no business logic, no nothing. It is just a protocol....
    Active Directory's primary feature is that it is an LDAP implementation. Also, OpenLDAP is an open source implementation of LDAP--not the protocol itself. The compination of OpenLDAP and SAMBA can deliver a lot of the backend functionality of Active Directory, but you are correct that they aren't a 1:1 replacement. Of all the examples of transitioning, that he gave in the post, this was the most accurate & he probably shouldn't be jumped on it because of this. I agree that the "NTFS to Samba" thing was quite ridiculous & is probably what motivated your post.
  2. Re:Wrong examples by passthecrackpipe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, well, the NTFS to Samba thing was the final straw, athough I hear the AD to OpenLDAP thing all the time, and it pisses me right off. I do Enterprise Open Source Deployments for a living - primarily desktop and infrastructure (directory, groupware and file and print, heyhey, exactly his list!) and nothing is uglyer to an AD administrator then the mess that is the Kerberos/OpenLDAP/Samba mudheap that sort-of delivers something sort of similar, but really doesn't. Even the IDEALX stuff linked to elsewhere doesn't really make the grade. For all its warts, AD is actually pretty admin friendly, and what is more, many organisations have spent lots of money to get to AD in the first place. That is why my company specialises in integrating Linux infrastructures with existing AD and/or Novell eDirectory. (integrating linxu with AD actually works pretty well...)

    --
    People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
  3. Re:Wrong examples by toddbu · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Man, I'm glad my doctor doesn't think like you. When I go to the doc, I tell him "Doc, my chest hurts". Now if I have a lung infection, would it be appropriate for my doctor to then tell me that I'm an idiot because I don't know the difference between my chest and lungs, and send me away with a harsh comment and a kick in the ass? What if I complained about a numb arm but I was really having a heart attack?

    I get tired of reading crap like this from folks who "know better" than everyone else. I highly doubt that you were born with the knowledge between NTFS and Samba, which means that you possess your knowledge only because someone else was kind enough to pass along their understanding to you. So why do you repay other's kindness to you by calling someone else "stupid"? Is stroking your own ego more important than helping someone else who wants to learn something new?

    --
    If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
  4. Re:Wrong examples by bloo9298 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would be interested to hear your opinion on the use of Kerberos in a UNIX environment. Personally, I am impressed by the way that MS have integrated Kerberos and made it relatively easy for application developers to use. The picture seems weaker in a UNIX environment, because few applications take advantage of Kerberos authentication (so people do not use Kerberos, so there is no incentive to add Kerberos support to applications, and so on). It is unfortunate. My question is, do you do anything interesting with Kerberos?

    And before a weenie jumps all over this post with "you can do this, and do that", yes, I know that Kerberos is sort of usable on UNIX. I am hoping that someone with a clue, such as the parent poster, will go into more detail about complex deployments with custom apps. To the parent poster: I have written Kerberized apps for both UNIX and Windows, used pam_krb, etc.