Managing Linux Users the Active Directory Way

So you want to manage Linux users, but your system administrators are lost without Microsofts Active Directory? Centrify has an answer: Centrify DirectControl Suite 3.

With this program, you can use AD to integrate Unix, Linux, Mac, J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition), and LAMP- (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) based Web applications. The program also provides support for Web-based single sign-on and federated identity management. It does this by leveraging Microsofts recently released ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services), which is included in Windows Server 2003 R2.

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DirectControl 3 also integrates with Unix- and Linux-based open-source infrastructure programs such as Samba and OpenSSH. The program supports 64-bit systems and the Windows Server 2003 R2 UNIX schema.

Other Windows/Linux management programs such as Vintelas Vintela Authentication Services require changes to be made to the existing Linux identity and password management programs. Vintelas solution is to migrate Linux users to AD, while Centrifys approach enables AD administrators to manage Linux and Unix users without modifying the native Unix and Linux identity management systems.

Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify, added that other such programs, like Novells ZENworks 7, require administrators to learn a new management system, while Centeris Likewise is more of a deployment tool than an administrators management suite.

Read the full story on Linux-Watch: Managing Linux Users the Active Directory Way

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