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Best Solution To Manage Both Mac And Pc Desktop For Medium Sized Business

вторник 29 января admin 4
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While some folks may choose to plop a Linux machine into your network, the vast majority of employees will choose between a modern version of Windows -- which will play nicely of course with your existing Active Directory infrastructure -- and the increasingly popular Macs. For starters, at the very least you and your users probably want the following: • Seamless access to the network where users can use their own login IDs • Protection of system access and privileges on the Mac, in a similar way to Windows machines • Easy access to file shares and network resources on both platforms • Centralized management of both Mac and Windows computers using native, or quasi-native tools The question is, how do you get there? Let's take a look at some of the options, ranked by price. The inexpensive option: Apple's Active Directory plug-in Apple has offered an Active Directory plug-in ever since Mac OS X 10.3. It's built into the operating system, and therefore has already been paid for and requires no other investment but time.

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It offers full integration (authentication-wise) with Microsoft Active Directory, so that each individual Mac computer on the network has a computer account in AD and is considered a member of the domain. The Mac OS X also uses Kerberos, so password policies and other authentication restrictions are fully enforced.

In a best-case scenario, the Active Directory plug-in for Mac OS X will allow the following: • A Mac OS X computer can live in a forest with multiple domains. • Mac users can be granted administrator access based on their Active Directory group membership. • Users must follow AD password policies, and they can be fully controlled. • Through Kerberos, Active Directory users only sign on once and can access all authorized resources.

• Administrators can enable mobile accounts for portable computers. • A preferred domain controller can be identified if necessary. • According to Apple, users can have network-based home directories, local home directories, or a combina¬tion of the two called Portable Home Directories, which are similar to roaming profiles on Windows.

The plug-in is aware of a network's Active Directory site structure. It will first query the global catalog (found using standard DNS lookups) and then select two domain controllers from all site DCs that respond.

The plug-in can then failover to other domain controllers if there's a problem communicating with the ones it initially selected. So what can't the plug-in do? Namely, Group Policy. More specifically, the Mac OS X client can't natively consume Group Policy Objects (GPOs), meaning much of the power of AD outside of the directory service is lost on Macs without the use of third-party solutions.

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You still need a package that can manage your Macs, even if they can authenticate to the Windows directory service. For more information on the plug-in, check out Apple's whitepaper on. The more expensive option: Third-party tools To overcome the no-GPO limitation of Apple's built-in tool, you have to look at a third-party solution, which unfortunately means more budgetary outlay. There are two main options currently on the market: Centrify's and from Thursby Software Solutions.