Joining Windows Server 2008 R2 to a Samba domain ...

English Network/Internet
1

I have an HP Proliant DL385 G7 with VMware ESXi 5.0 as a hypervisor host.

I have openSuSE 11.4 x64 installed with LDAP and Samba installed per the tutorial here:

Integrating LDAP and Samba using openSUSE

I have two instances of Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 installed: one as a terminal server and another as a SQL Server.

All three servers are installed as virtual machines on the ESXi host. All three connect to the Samba share just fine (read/write).

My problem is joining the W2008R2 servers to the Samba domain.

I’ve followed the instructions here: https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Windows7 but it doesn’t resolve the problem.

My objective is to authenticate through the Samba PDC and allow LDAP users to connect to the terminal server.

My objective is to configure LDAP users as domain users and grant access to the terminal server via domain login. That way we can control access from outside the network as well as inside. The network is relatively simple with 12-15 devices including client PCs and printers. Servers are virtualized on the VMware host.

I’m using a Linksys router for gateway services, so as not to require DHCP/DNS configuration on openSuSE I may consider DNS on openSuSE for convenience.

I’m also using LDAP in a SOGo environment which acts as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange. It will provide calendaring, e-mail and contacts.

Any help with joining the Windows Servers to the Samba domain would be appreciated.

Also, is there any advantage in using Idealx or ldapsmb as an alternative for Active Directory?

Thanks!

2

On 10/22/2011 03:26 AM, white eaglet wrote:
> Any help with joining the Windows Servers to the Samba domain would be
> appreciated

-=WELCOME=- new poster

you sure might get a great answer here, and you are very welcome to hang
out and see…however, from the horsepower of the server used, and the
enterprise level questions posed i feel pretty sure you have
accidentally posted to the wrong forum…

these are the fora of the openSUSE community…i’d bet your server is
certified to well run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server [SLES] (and not the
openSUSE we deal with here–they are blood related but NOT the
same…not nearly–would you run Fedora, it is to Red Hat as openSUSE is
to SLES?)

so, i suggest you review your server’s data sheet and load up the
commercial version available it is certified to use from suse.com, and
access avail yourself of the the enterprise level help you need over at
http://tinyurl.com/422mrnu

now, all of that said: it is probably very possible to run openSUSE 11.4
on that machine but there are several down sides to doing so: first is
the short life of openSUSE: 11.4 passes its end of life in 330 days, and
you will be in a situation of either moving to 12.1 or 12.2 before then,
and both of those will also be short lived…you can plan on system
change approximately once per year if you stick with openSUSE…

and, another is that 11.4 is still receiving a significant number of
patches and security updates…though despised and cursed hiccups do
occur…

as said, you are welcome to hang out and see if an enterprise level guru
happens through…there are some in and out…

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

3

Thanks for the response!

I started with SLES, and I started with the idea of using it as host to virtualize Windows Server 2008 R2 (as indicated). However, I found rather quickly that although documentation seemed to be complete, it was not always up-to-date, nor did it address the specific questions I had with Xen and KVM

I also found that my Broadcom NICs did not perform well under virtualization due to the drivers used by Xen and KVM

I needed LDAP for a Microsoft Exchange alternative, and SLES or openSuSE seemed like the ideal solutions. I needed two instances of Windows Server 2008, and I needed a simple way to control gateway and directory services. I struggled with trying to bridge my four NICs See the thread here](http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/network-internet/464350-bridged-networking-opensuse-11-4-xen.html)

Later, I contacted a third party consulting firm that suggested “best practices” was to use the VMware ESXi hypervisor as a host and configure guest machines on top of that, so I settled on a minimal openSuSE 11.4 x64 installation and two instances of Windows Server 2008 R2, and here I am.

The virtualization works great! (No thanks to Xen or KVM) It’s the easiest thing in the world to image or re-image a guest machine, and it’s all documented (by me), so I’m fairly comfortable with updating openSuSE or installing SLES at a later date. However, I understand your concern about the update cycle.

Incidentally, I traveled a similar path with Ubuntu Server and CentOS Ubuntu had the best documentation, but I could not get LDAP configured to work in either Ubuntu or CentOS (it’s not well-documented at all), and openSuSE’s YaST was by far the best tool to configure LDAP and Samba.

I agree that I most likely have posted my question to the wrong forum. I need to find a Samba forum, as it’s almost strictly a Samba question.

I have posted something similar on LinuxQuestions, so I’ll see if I can get some indication where to go from here. Thanks, again!

Oh! And, I’ll cruise the SLES forum a bit to see what I can find. Thanks for the link.