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Best FOSS Active Directory Alternative?
danboid writes "I'm an IT technician at a large school near Manchester, England. We currently have two separate networks (one for pupils, one for staff) each with its own Windows Server 2003 Active Directory box handling authentication and storing users' files. We're planning on restructuring the network soon and we'd like to be able to replace the two aging AD servers with a single, more powerful Linux server running an open source OpenLDAP implementation. The main contenders for this purpose seem to be Fedora Directory Server, OpenDS, and Apache Directory Server; but I've been unable to find meaningful comparisons among the three. I'd like to hear which solution Slashdot readers recommend. What is your experience with ease of implementation / maintenance? Any stories of similar (un)successful migrations? Any other tips for an organization wanting to drop AD for a FOSS equivalent?"
"MS will answer the phone at 3:00 am when you call." So you're saying being able to get some underpaid call center script-reading non-english-speaking drone (no offense to the person who is just trying to make a living) is worth paying money for?
i'd say the bottle neck was in samba not in jet, since it worked fine it nt4?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
First of all, why use crappy openldap when you can use the Netspace directory server that red hat bought and opensourced. There is a reason why they paid 23$ millions for it...
Then, AD isn't just a LDAP server with usernames and passwords....
Which is why many people can only use Windows setups. There's nothing like AD in the FOSS world. To start with, FOSS client apps should be lockdown-able from the server. But you can't do that...
I mean, in a office with a linux server and some linux clients, try to lockdown some options on Firefox, the desktop, evolution....surprise, you can't do it. Oh, yeah, there're a lot of workarounds everywhere, but they are different if you use KDE or Gnome or depending on the app you are using. It's a horrible mess.
Windows clients and servers, on the other hand, are VERY well coupled. The day someone cares to fix this in the FOSS world, a lot of people will start using Linux in corporate networks. Until then, Windows is pretty much the only realistic option. I can't understand why Red Hat, Suse and Ubuntu don't put more efforts on this, it's one of the biggest showstoppers for Linux adoption.