Joining SUSE Linux Desktop to Active Directory -- Demo Courtesy of Microsoft!
Friday, May 22, 2009
I always like seeing Centrify technical folks demo'ing the Centrify Suite to customers, but it is even better to see a partner show off our wares. That's why I greatly enjoyed seeing Keith Combs at Microsoft recently post on his blog a three part demo of Centrify DirectControl. And, as one commentator noted, it is always ironic to see a Microsoft person demo'ing Linux :-). Below are three parts of the demo, with my color commentary on each part.
In part 1, Keith shows adding a SUSE Linux Desktop system (SLED) to Active Directory (AD), and writes: "In the video just below, we are going to add a SLED 10 SP2 virtual machine to the contoso.com domain. We'll first check and verify the vm is able to find the domain controllers and that we have good connectivity. Then we'll join the domain and reboot the vm. Check it out."
[Tom's comments: I particularly like in the 7th minute of part 1, where Keith shows our "ADcheck" utility that does a comprehensive pre-install check of the SUSE Linux machine to make sure it is ready to have our agent deployed on it.]
In part 2, Keith shows how you can login to the SLED box using your Active Directory credentials. Keith writes: "Now that our workstation vm is a citizen of the contoso.com domain, we can start doing the stuff that would be a normal next step. For instance, we would want to verify user principals from AD can login on the Linux machine and use it. We would also want to check the security model and verify share and file permissions are working as expected."
[Tom's comments: in minute 4 Keith does a nice job of showing and explaining our patent-pending Zone technology that provides the ability to map multiple UNIX UIDs to a single Active Directory user.]
Finally, in part 3 of the demo, Keith demos our Group Policy for Linux capabilities. Keith notes: "Now that we can see networking, authentication and security is working properly, we can start to take advantage of the management infrastructure. For this demo, we are going to make a simple change to the SLED 10 SP2 GNOME settings to verify Group Policy Object (GPO) settings are flowing from Windows to Linux."
[Tom's comments: in minute 4 of this one Keith shows our Gnome Group Policy settings and in minute 8 talks up our industry leading Group Policy for Apple Mac OS X.]
These demos are some of the great stuff that is being shown in the "Microsoft TechNet: Integrate Your IT Environment" Interop road show hosted by Microsoft and sponsored by Centrify. Remaining events include:
- June 4, Mountain View, CA, USA
- June 9, Phoenix, AZ, USA
- June 11, Seattle, WA, USA
- June 23, Columbus, OH, USA
- June 25, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Hope to see you there!
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Centrify's DirectControl extension of the Group Policy framework to non-Microsoft platforms lets customers further leverage their investment in Active Directory.
Michael Dennis
Lead Program Manager
Windows Group Policy
Microsoft Corp.