http://my.galagzee.com/2008/11/12/microsoft-server-bad-for-business/ Tech in a Galagzee, Not So Far Away. Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:43:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://my.galagzee.com/2008/11/12/microsoft-server-bad-for-business/comment-page-1/#comment-1776 Ville Walveranta Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:42:50 +0000 http://my.galagzee.com/?p=148#comment-1776 I haven't used Samba much.. yet. But interestingly I just installed Samba for the purposes of the setup I wrote about in this article. File sharing tends to be fairly stable on Windows (besides the inherent "need" for Windows to be rebooted at least every couple of weeks - fortunately Microsoft security updates take care of that. ;) But moving any feature away from Windows server platform is a welcome one. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative for ActiveDirectory when a Windows LAN is configured to use a Windows domain. What makes the situation doubly frustrating is the fact that ActiveDirectory is "Microsoft's implementation" of LDAP, and probably strategically Microsoft has prevented ActiveDirectory information from being replicated, say, to OpenLDAP. Thus if users on Windows LAN also need to access UNIX-based resources, the UNIX services must authenticate against the ActiveDirectory! :( There are some solutions (which come at cost) like Symark's <a href="http://www.symark.com/products/padoverview.html" TARGET="_blank" rel="nofollow">powerADvantage</a> product that externalizes the login data from ActiveDirectory -- but I'm not sure whether powerADvantage has the functionality to replicate the logins, either (which means the logins for the whole network would still need to live on Windows platform only). More on this (as well as on Samba) later! I haven’t used Samba much.. yet. But interestingly I just installed Samba for the purposes of the setup I wrote about in this article. File sharing tends to be fairly stable on Windows (besides the inherent “need” for Windows to be rebooted at least every couple of weeks – fortunately Microsoft security updates take care of that. But moving any feature away from Windows server platform is a welcome one. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative for ActiveDirectory when a Windows LAN is configured to use a Windows domain. What makes the situation doubly frustrating is the fact that ActiveDirectory is “Microsoft’s implementation” of LDAP, and probably strategically Microsoft has prevented ActiveDirectory information from being replicated, say, to OpenLDAP. Thus if users on Windows LAN also need to access UNIX-based resources, the UNIX services must authenticate against the ActiveDirectory! There are some solutions (which come at cost) like Symark’s powerADvantage product that externalizes the login data from ActiveDirectory — but I’m not sure whether powerADvantage has the functionality to replicate the logins, either (which means the logins for the whole network would still need to live on Windows platform only). More on this (as well as on Samba) later!

]]> http://my.galagzee.com/2008/11/12/microsoft-server-bad-for-business/comment-page-1/#comment-1773 Chaz Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:11:28 +0000 http://my.galagzee.com/?p=148#comment-1773 Excellent information. It's refreshing to find someone who looks at the issues rather than the brand name when choosing software. I simplify further, to "Windows for the desktop, UNIX/Linux for servers" and I use samba for file sharing. You didn't mention what your experience of samba has been, and I'd welcome your take on it. Excellent information. It’s refreshing to find someone who looks at the issues rather than the brand name when choosing software. I simplify further, to “Windows for the desktop, UNIX/Linux for servers” and I use samba for file sharing. You didn’t mention what your experience of samba has been, and I’d welcome your take on it.

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