Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Integrating Open Directory with Active Directory

In This Chapter

• Understanding Active Directory and Open Directory integration

• Connecting a Mac OS X Snow Leopard server to Active Directory

• Leveraging Active Directory user and computer information

• Setting up Mac clients to be managed by Active Directory

• Configuring Open Directory to utilize Active Directory single sign-on

• Troubleshooting and getting help

Microsoft Active Directory is a fact of life for most corporate networks. Sure, having a homogeneous Macintosh world would make life easier (and would curtail many of the issues that keep IT folks up late at night, such as viruses running rampant through the network). But in reality, corporate networks are largely Microsoft territory. Fortunately you can use a Mac server to provide native services to Mac clients within a larger Windows network.

Adding a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server to an existing Active Directory infrastructure is a bit less automated than setting up a homogeneous Mac network, but still relatively straightforward. Apple provides an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) plug-in and an Active Directory plug-in that allows a Snow Leopard server to access information from Active Directory, allowing for single sign-on and enforcement of user and computer policies. In this chapter, I show you how to integrate a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server into an existing Active Directory implementation.

One of the great things about Apple's implementation of Open Directory services ...