Hello,
We currently have around 20 macs within the school.
At the moment the music Dept has 6 which are connected to the network but not AD, they can access shares through the computers but have opted for DropBox as it suits the HoD better.
We have 14 which are sat in an Art room, we've gone through the process of adding them to the domain with directory utility, creating some applescript to map SMB & link to the desktop and have let the kids logon.
Recently the 14 have become 'flakey', the binding to AD seems to be failing & generally it's acting up a bit - we don't have time to keep going around re-binding to AD - we need something that is going to be a proper solution. I have read about the XServ and i'm very willing to put this in but my question is how seamless can the integration be? Is it scalable? Is it easy to do when you've rtfm? Will this solve issues with AD auth?
I really do not want to have two sets of logins/credentials - i'd like it to be integrated to AD as the kids can barely remember the current details they have. Obviously cost is something I have to bite the bullet with, learning curve is another which i'm more than happy to address - but is this going to be a solution to the problems we're having?
Would love the opinion of a hardened Windows admin who has had to cross over :-)

