windows desktop and linux servers

[and36y]

Firstly , let me apologise if this thread is in the wrong area.

My work environment consists of a small company that has bee annexed off of a larger environment. We have around 10 XP pc's locally, all servers are held within the other company. They consist of a windoze NAS and about 6 Red Hat servers. Our mail is through their MS Exchange and our authentication is through their Domain controllers. OK that's set the scene.

Generally we are stuck with the XP desktops. but that is our only restriction. I have started down the route of outsourcing the mail environment. I am looking at building a new NAS based around samba. (Is this the way to go)

My question is, how do I cut away from this other company, what do I use in place for authentication and user profiles if I don't use their Domain controller. Do you know of any good sites that could guide me? I would really like to see us completely independent from this other company, and at the same time as independent as possible from bill gates.

As ever all constructive advise will be greatly appreciated

Andy

[Rubberman]

Firstly , let me apologise if this thread is in the wrong area.

My work environment consists of a small company that has bee annexed off of a larger environment. We have around 10 XP pc's locally, all servers are held within the other company. They consist of a windoze NAS and about 6 Red Hat servers. Our mail is through their MS Exchange and our authentication is through their Domain controllers. OK that's set the scene.

Generally we are stuck with the XP desktops. but that is our only restriction. I have started down the route of outsourcing the mail environment. I am looking at building a new NAS based around samba. (Is this the way to go)

My question is, how do I cut away from this other company, what do I use in place for authentication and user profiles if I don't use their Domain controller. Do you know of any good sites that could guide me? I would really like to see us completely independent from this other company, and at the same time as independent as possible from bill gates.

As ever all constructive advise will be greatly appreciated

Andy

This is just a start, but if you are considering running a Samba server on a Linux host, then you can also install OpenLDAP which will provide the services of a domain controller. A lot of people do this in small to large environments. I believe that there are tools to migrate user account information from Active Directory to OpenLDAP, though since I have no experience doing that I don't know what they are without doing some research. In any case, a good place to start is OpenLDAP, Main Page

[and36y]

Is Centos/redhat/fedora Directory server any good? Can they run as a redundant pair? similar to MS PDC's


Andy

[Rubberman]

Is Centos/redhat/fedora Directory server any good? Can they run as a redundant pair? similar to MS PDC's

Don't know, but probably. Check the OpenLDAP web site: OpenLDAP, Main Page