Just as Slashdot is full of trolls and OT comments help forums often have people posting unhelpful comments. Just ignore them. Life is too short for arguing with idiots.

I find the Samba help forums are generally excellent if you take the time to ask a sensible question instead of just posting the first problem that comes up. Often the task of formulating a sensible question solves a problem without actually having to ask on the forums at all. I also generally find my query has already been answered in the forum and all I need to do is search.

The Samba documentation is an excellent resource and generally answers most of the questions you may have. Try starting with John Terpstra's Samba 3 by example which is a practical guide to implementing Samba 3. I don't know if John is working on a Samba 4 update to the book, but there is a WIKI, HowTO and a FAQ available. If you are risk averse you may not want to use Samba 4 in production just yet :)

I have foung openLDAP to be reliable, compatible and easy to use. Can you elaborate on why you think it is crap?

And the reasons are?

Nor is openLDAP just a store for Windows user names and passwords. I use an openLDAP server for Windows services as well as providing user configuration for other services such as sendmail. The great advantage of using FOSS is that you are free from vendor lock in and can consider non-proprietary alternatives in other areas of your network.

Nowhere in the article do I see a desire to use FOSS desktop clients. The submitter simply wants to replace AD server with a non MS LDAP based alternative.

This is otherwise known as vendor lock in. Some of use have tried very hard to break free of it to avoid being held to ransom by a vendor.

I have been running what you consider an unrealistic option for the best part of a decade. I have yet to be fired. Sirius the consultancy I recommended have a client list of blue chip companines, local govenment and schools. They are all running some form of FOSS backend. You might like to take a fresh look at FOSS, it really works in the real world.

In my previous post I forgot to mention that OGC/Becta are the government agency's responsible for technology in the UK educational environment. It is considerably easier for a UK school to use a Becta accredited supplier than any other supplier. It is an incredible achievement for Sirius to gain that accreditation as no other FOSS consultancy has managed to cut through government red tape thus far.

I think openLDAP should be one of the first products the submitter tries. In my experience it is reliable scalable and free of proprietary cruft. I have used it for years in a commercial network with Samba. OpenLDAP has allowed my company to drastically cut licensing costs, support costs and lengthen hardware lifecycles. As the submitter is UK based I would recommend they contact Sirius. Sirius are the consulting company I use and they are the only UK OGC/Becta accredited FOSS specialist. Sirius have considerable experience in the UK education market and in the submitters position they would be near the top of the list of people to call. Take a look at their client list to see the kind of pedigree they have.

<disclaimer>

I have worked closely with Mark Taylor the CEO of Sirius for a long time now. Please consider anything I say about them biased, contact them youself and make up your own mind about them.

</disclaimer>

I have been running an openLDAP/GNU Linux production system for the best part of a decade now. I use openLDAP and Samba on Debian. It is my experience that the LDAP implementations from commercial vendors are often proprietary, unreliable and usually do not play nicely with FOSS services that wish to use them. Unless you have a very good reason to use a proprietary implementation might I suggest trialling plain old slapd on one of the free distributions first. You will of course benefit from much lower licensing costs in the long run if this approach works for you.

Documentation is your friend here. When you buy an item of kit create an operating and maintenance manual for it. These can simply be a folder with the hardware manuals and maintenance agreements in them. I also include the emails between management and the IT admins discussing the equipment order rationale as well as the purchase order. Make sure your emails make clear what the kit does not do as well as what it should do in these emails. Ten minutes of printing, hole punching and putting it all into a folder can stop a management witch hunt dead in its tracks for years to come. This is especially true if features have been cut due to management led budget constraints. Adding the relevant CD's/DVD's and build notes can make your life much easier in the future as a bonus.