Apple integration with AD cost

[ozydave]

Hello

Just a quick question before I go mad, thats not stupid mad its mad mad.

 

We are getting a 100 odd macs and integrating them with AD, to use AD to login and auto map a few drives (home drive, shared etc)

I think £5 K is way over the top for this.

 

Any thoughts on the cost?

 

Cheers

[Max_Power]

Is that including the hardware for an apple server and some software? Or just engineer time? Or setup of integration and setup of all the MACs?

 

Looking at this at the moment for project over summer and engineer time to configure and setup rules and authentication is coming in around £2K inc VAT

 

Hardware is another £1K ish

[3s-gtech]

£5k for AD integration?!

 

A Mac as a server (a Mini is usually perfectly sufficient, but even a good spec Mac Pro isn't that much), setup an OD and integrate WM with AD, then add AD and OD to the Macs. Perhaps install DeployStudio for imaging too. Not sure if there's a remote way of adding that many Macs to OD (ARD?), we don't have that many so just manually add them. Still not £5k worth. Also worth learning how to do yourself for future support, if that's the context.

[ben604]

What 3s-gtech said, it's pretty straight forward, but with 100 machines, it will be time consuming to add them to AD manually. Not sure if there's a quick way to do it... DeployStudio is easy enough too, just follow the online guide.

[ozydave]

Thanks guys

Nope, no hardware, thats separate. This is purely for doing it. Thought it was a bit over the top. Going to drill down a bit just exactly what they are doing.

We are moving to a new build so its going to be chaos thats why I need someone to do it. At this cost I'm going start looking at it this afternoon.

I've seen a post on these forums with some detailed instructions which might do the trick

Thanks

[ben604]

If only you were a bit closer, I'd do it for..say...£2500..

[ben604]

and some Chocolate Rich Tea!

[ozydave]

and some Chocolate Rich Tea!

Rich tea, my your cheap!

[chazzy2501]

You can add macs directly to ad without a mac server. I assume you get added benefits if you have a mac server?

[3s-gtech]

Yup, some pretty decent features like management of settings, lockdown, pushing updates, etc etc. Well worth it for the cost of the server and a bit of time (not that much time too).

[sted]

if you are installing less than say 10 apples probably not worth the effort for 100 id say you want a mac server. While you can manage mac settings from a designated mac and get them in ad with a bit of fiddling when the numbers mount up do it properly

[sidewinder]

Yeah £5k is way over the top. While it can be a bit fiddly to do, it isn't really difficult per se, and there are plenty of guides online

[Roberto]

Hello

Just a quick question before I go mad, thats not stupid mad its mad mad.

 

We are getting a 100 odd macs and integrating them with AD, to use AD to login and auto map a few drives (home drive, shared etc)

I think £5 K is way over the top for this.

 

Any thoughts on the cost?

 

Cheers

 

I'd want to see a detailed proposal of what it is they're doing for this, for example, what precisely is meant by "AD integration" here? It's not difficult to join a mac to a Windows domain, it can be done as a step during a DeployStudio installation or easily from the desktop by a technician. If you have the user's home drive specified in AD then its easy to make that mount at login and additional shares are the matter of a very simple applescript running at login. Something like this would do it (in the example below, I'm mounting a share named "private" from a windows server named "fsshared" and a share named "dvds" from an apple server named "borehamwood"):

 

try

mount volume "smb://fsshared.internal.lutonsfc.ac.uk/private"

mount volume "afp://borehamwood.internal.lutonsfc.ac.uk/dvds"

end try

 

Save the script as an application using the Script Editor and put it in System Preferences -> Accounts -> Startup Items to mount the drives when you log in.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Roberto

[ozydave]

This is my detailed breakdown

 

Setup all the MAC Server, create a client MAC Image (which there could be multiple), distribute the image to all MACs and integrate it into Active Directory.

 

Would we need more than one mac server? Defo only need one image, the mac are going into music and media

 

So do you think I should tell them to go jump

[TheScarfedOne]

For me, in a similar situation needing macs for a music dept...I'm just getting the imacs, buying centrify which will do the ad and control settings, and then linking into my sccm infrastructure for the two additional apps.... Sibelius and garage band. No need for Mac server then. Will get ard just in case and for screen control and support.

[truebluesteve]

Be prepared for a lot of frustration setting these up and keeping them going. We have around 50 macs and an Xserve and they really can take up a lot of your time. Deploy Studio is very good though and free!

[Tallwood_6]

Take a look at RM orbit, we have been field trailing it the last couple of months and its available for order now although not quite released and this will give you much of the integration for well under a grand and you don't need a CCx network.

[seawolf]

I think the judgement on the cost depends in just how much hand holding you're getting from the engineer. If they are going to doing the following for you then it may be worth it if you have

no experience in the area:

 

1. Determine your requirements and go through possible solutions (magic triangle with AD, OD, and WGM, or just AD and Profiles)

 

2. Ensure your environment is compatible and there are no issues such as having a .local domain (it could still be done, but the results wouldn't be great)

 

3. Configure Mac server to requirements (including DeployStudio or similar for imaging)

 

4. Create image to SOE requirements and upload to imaging server, test with you to ensure meets requirements,

 

5. Test deploy SOE image and ensure bindings, file mapping, printing and other management profiles or management preferences do what you expect and that nothing is missing or not working properly.

 

5. Deploy 100 Macs and ensure working as expected and to requirements.

 

If they will be doing all of that, then it might just be money well-spent. If you have no clue about Macs or how to manage them, particularly in a Windows server environment then a good engineer holding your hand through all of this will save you many headaches. Imagine setting up an AD, DNS, file and print server, all of the GPOs, and an imaging server (GHOST OR FOG) if you had no clue about Windows or AD and that is the equivalent of what you are about to do in the Mac world. Someone with plenty of experience and knowledge will be well worth it. Of course, they do need to be knowledgeable and experienced....

Edited April 28, 2013 by seawolf

[Roberto]

This is my detailed breakdown

 

Setup all the MAC Server, create a client MAC Image (which there could be multiple), distribute the image to all MACs and integrate it into Active Directory.

 

Would we need more than one mac server? Defo only need one image, the mac are going into music and media

 

So do you think I should tell them to go jump

 

I wouldn't be too quick to send them away if you need *someone* to do it because you don't have any of your own resources and/or (as @seawolf mentions) you don't have any in-house skills. What if all the other quotes you get for the job are more expensive?

 

If you really do need multiple, complex images building and there are complications with your current AD config then this quote might turn out to be more reasonable than it appears on first look... If you're after some training to go along with the configuration work then I could easily see this running to five days work, if not more.