Greetings,

I would like some input into how others here are doing multiplatform account management with their NetApp devices. I have an idea of how I would like to proceed, so if anyone would like to sanity check my thoughts and provide some insight I'd greatly appreciate it.

I am looking for a way to unify our authentication services at my employer. Presently we have clients authenticating via Windows PDCs, NetWare eDirectory (Novell Client), and UNIX PASSWD file.

In evaluating Novell's new Open Enterprise Server line, I realized a big potential of the Linux version of this is to consolidate directories. For example, I can use Samba to emulate a PDC, NCP Server to provide Novell Client services, and eDirectory via LDAP for UNIX authentication.

Which brings me to my nifty network layout. I would like to use OES on Linux to centralize all of this. I would have a Samba domain with the NetApp devices able to join (supposedly). I would configure the CIFS and NFS exports on the NetApp devices. Lastly, I would mount the applicable NFS exports on the OES server itself and reexport them with NCP Server as Novell Shares.

To Windows clients it looks like they're in a domain and logging in with their eDirectory IDs, to UNIX clients their login works just like passwd except it's over LDAP(TLS) with their eDirectory IDs and mounted NFS paths, and lastly to the existing Novell users who are not in a domain the NetApp filers would look like traditional NetWare volumes.

OES does the magic rights translations to convert everything to Posix (I'd have to check about ACL on Posix).

So the key barrier I see involves how to train the NetApp devices to correlate Windows SIDs to UNIX UID/GID. This way a user could access their same data regardless of platform with the same eDirectory login. I know this is possible with Mixed mode security and the usermap.cfg.

The questions: -------------------- Is this the optimal way to manage this? Would a simple usermap.cfg entry like THEDOMAIN* == * do the trick, or are things more complicated then that? Has anyone used a Samba PDC to manage NetApp devices?

Thank you for any information anyone has

Regards, Ryan