Currently, our network at JFBC is about 15% Mac. One of the big ongoing projects I’ve been working on is better integration and management of the growing number of Macs in our environment. We currently leverage Active Directory for single signon, but, beyond that, there are no real management tools in place for Macs.

Some things are possible by extending the Active Directory schema to add some of the apple-specific LDAP attributes. However, this moves the AD environment into a somewhat “unsupported” configuration and still doesn’t provide for full control when it comes to Mac management.

The best way to fully manage the Mac clients - including centralized update management and general settings, including appearance, shortcuts, scripting, etc. is through the use of Apple’s Open Directory system. There was definitely some effort put forth on Apple’s part here, because Open Directory can fully integrate with Active Directory. Basically, AD gets used for authentication, then AD users and groups can be linked to OD groups. Specific management settings can then be applied to the OD groups.

I’ve just ordered a new Apple Xserve to handle this task, which should arrive next week. I’m excited about being able to take integration and management of our Mac environment to the next level.

Other Mac stuff on my radar:

• OS X Leopard deployment (Jonathan has agreed be my next victim beta tester).
• Office 2008 deployment.
• Possible Final Cut Server implementation (Already briefly discussed with our media team, will be exploring this further, including storage requirements).
• Migration of our closed circuit TV announcements from PowerPoint on Windows to Keynote on Mac (Currently working with our communications team on this).

Expect lots of Mac related posts in the coming weeks/months!