active directory

Active Directory in the home: roaming profiles

Friday, October 3rd, 2008
by alphaxion

We all hear plenty of complaints about Windows and how Microsoft has dropped the ball of late; coupled with the traditional bitching over the multitude of flaws in their OS or shit that is just plain missing. But, it’s funny how you never hear anywhere near as many people making suggestions on how to address this!

Something I have mentioned in the past is that active directory has many capabilities that could really improve the home experience. I’ve also pointed out the missed opportunity where MS could have shipped a super wizardised version of active directory with WHS that would have brought many of these great features that I have been using for the past 6 or 7 years now from behind the scenes of an IT department into the home of the average person.
And I really mean super wizardised, of course there can be an advanced mode as well for those who are used to the normal interface and know what they’re doing.

I’ll be randomly highlighting capabilities of AD that I believe could enhance the windows experience and admins have been using to control those pesky users all these years.

This time it’s roaming profiles.

With the release of OSX 10.5, the apple world got a taste of roaming profiles, only it was tethered to the .mac system - which gives the added bonus of it working on any mac with a net connection, a very nice touch but one you have to pay for.
I heard a few people at the time claim that the ability to have your settings travel from one machine to another was “yet more features osx has over windows”.

This is patently untrue - windows has had roaming profiles for a long, long time. Only you would encounter them in a corporate environment rather than in the home.
It’s also quite invisible, unless your IT department decided to not make use of folder redirection and you save everything in your documents folder and the desktop; then you’ll notice it when logging off and logging in as it takes an age to sync your data to or from the server.

In which case, learn basic file management and avoid this by filing away your data instead of splurging it across 15 different locations where 12 of them are copies of the same damn “funny internet pictures and videos” that have been doing the rounds since the dawn of net-time!

Breathe… where was I? Yes.

As homes begin to fill up with different windows based PCs - and there’s nothing stopping MS from building a linux plugin either - the ability to log into any of your machines and your settings move around with you could become an extremely handy feature and it’s about time it moved into the home too.
And it’s easy to make a distinction between a laptop and a desktop within AD, so the desktops can make use of folder redirection to keep your docs on the WHS, reducing logon times and making sure your important docs get backed up! Laptops can then be set up to save a local copy of your files so you’re not tethered to your local network, but your changes get sync’d when you are.

Tell me that’s not a great way of improving the user experience for those encumbered with windows!

And all this technology already exists! The only problem is with the totally retarded decision by microsoft to remove the AD joining capabilities from their windows crippled home versions. Which means an AD bolt-on pack would be needed for those without the “real” versions of windows.

linux - the side everyone fails to mention.

Sunday, September 14th, 2008
by alphaxion

The thing I am yet to see anyone tackle in the user argument of “which is better windows, linux or mac” is that of the corporate world that makes up a much larger part of the computing world.

Now, I’m not talking about the more specialised world of unix powered data centres and specific applications but that of the integrated small to medium sized business.

These people want easy to use services be they data storage points, CRM packages, office application suites and various collaboration tools that intertwine their tendrils thru all corporate applications and the ubiquitous email system using a myriad of mechanisms to access it.. be it a web browser, a pda/smartphone, a desktop, a thin client or even a bespoke appliance.

Couple this with a need to manage and control all of these machines and services through a single directory mechanism that can alter what people see and access using a single, auditable account (in order to trace what they have been doing and when).

Now, I’ve not had any experience of using ldap outside of a microsoft environment (just 9 years worth of experience being the sysadmin over initially an NT domain, then migrated over to an Acitve Directory one) but I can’t really imagine a small to medium business using anything other than a microsoft active directory model - the many things you can do with active directory and the various services MS develop that hook directly into this make for a formidable opponent to fight when you begin looking for open source alternatives - especially when you don’t really need to pay for highly specialised courses for an end user to be able to use the tools available as well as for the admin team to manage and administrate them.
Remember, there’s more to the cost of a corporate network than the software you buy.

I do notice that many of the “why don’t we use something other than windows” comments are made by people with practically zero experience of actually managing a corporate network.
This isn’t to say that the MS way of doing a corporate network is the best and only way, it’s just that it’s often the most used way because it’s a very easy and yet extensive system - the hardest part is getting your head around their perplexing licensing system, there’s courses that deal with just the licensing alone!

I would love to see the *nix community highlight how you can use *nix to centrally manage and administrate a corporate network in order to cater for your users in the way that group policy, wsus, wds, sharepoint, MOM, active directory, isa, live communications server and exchange already does for the windows world.

Once you can present a manageable alternative to these, then *nix will be ready to take on microsoft in the corporate network, so come on you *nix advocates - educate us as to how you would use *nix to manage a corporate network!