Shared Windows / Mac networks - What are others doing?

[LSDWho]

Over the past few months I've been looking at various methods of ways for our pupils to use both Windows and Mac networks within our school.

 

At present we have a Music dept that has its own Open Directory setup - so pupils have a separate login for the Mac network, and centrally store of Home folders on a NAS. Separate to that, within the Art dept we have a number of macs that are connected to Active Directory allowing pupils to use their Windows network login. In that case, their mac home folders are local to the mac that they log into - not ideal! This also regularly causes keychain issues, particularly when the AD account password is changed. However, this does allow them to access their Windows home directory fairly easily.

 

We have tried setting the Mac home directory to be the same as the Windows home folder, but this stops some applications from working (such as iPhoto) as they need an AFP formatted partition to work. Also, this doesn't seem to be generally recommended practice.

 

So, how best to achieve what we need? In an ideal world we'd like both Windows and Mac networks to share a single login (we're pretty much tied to using AD for this) and have a single home folder that works on both OS's (including all required applications). OK, this is something that's pretty unattainable. So what's the best we can hope for? Two separate logins and passwords - one for Windows and one for Mac networks, each with its own centrally stored home folder (using NTFS and AFP respectively). We can live with this, but what our users would really like is to easily access their Windows home folder whilst logged onto the Mac network (the reverse isn't really required). Ideally we'd like to easily present the users Windows Home folder on the Mac doc when they log in - but with two lots of account credentials in play gives authentication issues. Of course users can save their AD credentials in their keychain when they access the Windows home folder for the first time, but it's a somewhat inelegant solution.

 

I'm curious how others have their Windows / Mac networks living together in a school environment. Has anyone come up with a magic solution that works really well for them?

 

Cheers,

 

LSDWho

[gshaw]

We also tried NTFS shares but had similar issues with Adobe programs, way too easy to corrupt files just by clicking "Get Info" or similar actions. In the end we've got two products that have finally given us a stable setup for 300+ machines:

 

- Centrify for Mac deals with user provisioning and allows GPO to configure settings

- ExtremeZIP serves out AFP from a Windows Server

 

Both paid products but worth it to get a setup that works in a networked environment.

[LSDWho]

Thanks for your response gshaw.

 

I've contacted with both Centrify and Acronis (they've changed their product from ExtremeZ-IP to Access Connect now) to get an idea of the costs involved. I'm hoping they won't be prohibitively high.

 

Cheers,

 

LSDWho

[LSDWho]

Just wanted to update since my last post.

 

Have been running the demos of both Acronis and Centrify now for around a week. Had a bit of an issue getting the macs to look in the right places for Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos in the same way that Windows does. Thanks to a pointer from BLau at Centrify to try using relative rather than absolute syslinks we've managed to get it all working for our needs.

 

Pointing Mac and Windows to same "Documents" folde... - Centrify Community

 

Thanks for the advice gshaw.

 

Cheers,

 

LSDWho

[gshaw]

Ah yes that sounds familiar, enjoy

[Eudora931]

Can I ask how much Centrify is costing you?

[gshaw]

I'd have to check tbh, someone I know in a school is using JAMF Casper suite as another option

[Achandler]

Centrify is about (depending on your needs):

 

£550 per 5 Administration licenses (one off I believe)

£375 per 10 workstations license (again one off I believe)

Annual ongoing support is about £250 or so on a very low number of iMacs and you have to take it in the first year, it should entitle you to upgrades etc.