[Bioclusters] pointers on cluster integration with MS activedirectory environments

[Chris Dagdigian]

Actually after looking more closely at Centrify (thanks everyone!) it  
appears that one of the functions you get with their Linux/Active  
Directory integration product is a daemon that can act as a NIS  
server for "legacy" devices and systems.  This means that one can  
license a few critical cluster nodes and then simply run one or more  
Centrify NIS daemons on the cluster to feed authentication data from  
Active Directory through NIS to the cluster nodes. The NIS product  
also locally caches credentials to avoid hammering the domain  
controller all the time. I'm betting you lose some of the policy  
based features you get with a full Centrify deployment but using NIS  
would allow someone to satisfy the access/authentication requirement  
without licensing the entire cluster.  There is one lurker on this  
list who is already doing this on a test cluster with plans to move  
it into production shortly.

Regards,
Chris


On Aug 24, 2006, at 2:53 PM, <Daniel.G.Roberts at sanofi-aventis.com>  
wrote:

> Also Vintela VAS should work..
> Anyone have first hand experience with using either centrify or vas  
> in their cluster for user authentication?
>
> I gather that you still have to run a lightweight ldap server on  
> the headnode in order to have the compute nodes authenticate the  
> user..
> thoguths?
> dan