Authenticaion Choices

[Nabeel Moidu]

On 5/3/06, Chiu, PCM (Peter) <P.C.M.Chiu at rl.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> Not sure if this is the right forum to pose some questions about
> authentication.
> Please redirect me if not.
>
> I would like to know what people's views are regarding
> the use of LDAP or/and Active Directory for authentication
> on a group of (160) mostly Linux based servers mixed with a handful
> of XP machines.


Active Directory is  a  Captive Directory . You  put it in  your network
and one by one  you will have to move every single service of yours to M$
stuff from Redmond.Go for any other LDAP server , like Redhat Directory
Server or OpenLDAP, and you can abide by open standards . M$ AD supports
LDAP but no custom schema can be added to it AFAIK.You will have to adjust
your requirements every time to what Microsoft provides and that would mean
more licenses from M$,like say you want to have a mail server , Intranet etc
to authenticate from the LDAP/AD and you will have to end up buying Exchange
,SharePoint etc .

In particular, I would like to know
> a. how reliable these servers are on Linux,


Reliability of what  - LDAP authentication or in general ?

b. how flexible to allow new clients to be added,
> c. how easy for users to change their passwords and get populated
> across, and
> d. if it allows file sharing over NFS or samba.


For this the above three I  suppose you might better go ahead with a Samba
PDC with LDAP backend.

--
Thanks and Regards
Nabeel Moidu
System Administrator
OnMobile System Inc
Bangalore, India
http://nmkuttiady.blogspot.com


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