[CoLoCo] Jeff LePage - Migrating from AD to Samba

[David L. Willson]

Jeff,

I remember that you are recycling your Windows license for use as a Terminal Server, but
I  might recommend that unless there's a specific advantage to getting rid of AD, you
may want to leave it in place until Samba 4 is ready enough for you to use, and use a
few shared XP boxes or Vista boxes for your legacy Windows apps, instead.  Or, you could
get someone to donate a Windows 2000 Server license for you to use as a Terminal Server.

There is no smooth migration path from AD to Samba.  There is a path from NT4 to Samba
which you may be able to use, in whole or in part, and there may be some possibility to
go from AD to NT4, but it doesn't look easy, by any stretch.

For NT4 to Samba, see the following articles:
http://us4.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/NT4Migration.html
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3454421

And for migration between Microsoft domains, see:
Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT) <-- Bear in mind, you won't find many articles on
 downgrading to NT4.

I was wrong about TDBSAM as a good backend for you.  If you are satified with one DC,
you have almost no reason to migrate to Samba, and TDBSAM is not suitable for multiple
domain controller scenarios.  To get redundancy, you want to use LDAPSAM at the back end
and probably multiple LDAP servers.  For detailed discussion, see:
http://us4.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/samba-bdc.html

-- David