Traditional methods of managing Mac® Light image resizer for mac free download. systems aren’t as easy as IT admins would like them to be. The concept of utilizing Microsoft® Active Directory® (AD or MAD) for managing Mac users hasn’t really been a viable option historically, due to AD being designed to integrate with Windows® products and resources first and foremost. So, in this modern era of heterogeneous environments ruled by the cloud, is there a way to implement Active Directory for Mac while still managing Windows and Linux® systems?
Binding Mac To Active Directory
Extend & Sync Active Directory. Connect to and get the most from your current Active Directory® domain and expand the tools that drive your business across clouds and resources, like Azure®, O365®, and G Suite®, and Human Capital Management systems like Workday. Likewise Open for Mac OS v.6.0 A free, open source application that joins Mac OS X machines to Microsoft Active Directory and securely authenticates users with their domain credentials. Key Features: - Joins Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX systems to Active Directory domains in a.
We’re in an age of IT where you generally can’t utilize AD alone – a plethora of add-on solutions (identity bridges, SSO solutions, etc.) are required to bridge the gap between Active Directory and non-Windows products. But where did it all go wrong? To better understand how the IT landscape has evolved, we need to step back and evaluate the history of directory services.
An Active Directory History Lesson
Nearly two decades ago, Microsoft decided to capitalize on the fact that they were a dominant force in the IT space with the prevalence of Windowsproducts in the work environment. The IT giant built a directory service tool designed to federate their Windows identities: Active Directory. This on-prem directory immediately took hold in the enterprise in 1999 because most organization’s IT infrastructure was based around Windows resources hosted locally. What could be better than centrally managing all of your IT resources?
On-Prem Directory Solutions
Of course, over time, Mac and Linux machines started to crop up in the working world. While it was possible to jump through some hoops and have your Mac system communicate with AD, it didn’t come close to resembling the seamless integration of Windows resources.
Shortly after the creation of AD, Apple released Open Directory (OD), their own directory solution designed to tightly integrate with, you guessed it, Macs. OD was meant to replace the need to utilize Active Directory for Mac systems. Now, both of these directory services were on-prem software solutions, each meant to further lock-in their users to Windows and Apple products. For homogeneous networks, these two directory services would make perfect sense. However, as we enter the era of heterogeneous IT, admins are constantly challenged when operating in a mixed OS environment.
Active Directory for Mac
The introduction of the cloud further complicated the network environment for many IT admins. What was once straightforward and Windows-centric had now become a Frankenstein-esque IT patchwork of sorts. The emergence of web-based apps such as Salesforce®, or productivity platforms like G Suite™, greatly impacted how users interacted with their directory services.
Now, as organizations shift to modern, heterogeneous environments, the concept of a reimagination of Active Directory for the cloud era makes a lot of sense. This cloud-based solution should not just resemble Active Directory for Mac or Windows or Linux, but rather a cloud identity management platform that securely manages and connects users to all of their IT resources.
Manage it all with JumpCloud®
Luckily, a next-generation directory service has emerged to meet the needs of IT admins everywhere, called JumpCloud® Directory-as-a-Service®. This cloud-based directory service is the reimagination of what Active Directory could provide for Windows systems, while being able to accommodate all three major platforms – Mac, Windows, and Linux. Including GPO like capabilities and True Single Sign-On™, JumpCloud connects your users to their IT resources like systems, files, networks, and applications regardless of platform, protocol, provider, or location.
Mac management is just a part of the full functionality of JumpCloud; schedule a demo today to see for yourself. If you have any further questions regarding the next-generation directory service, feel free to contact us or sign up for a free account. Your first ten users are free, and they always will be.
Joining a Mac to Active Directory has continued to get more and more difficult over the years. High Sierra and Mojave now require a Active Directory functional level of Windows Server 2008 or later and are still pretty tricky to get to join it.
When I started researching the topic I saw a whole lot of advice to install third party software to join a Mac to Active Directory. In most corporate environments installing third party software is frowned upon due to licensing and security considerations so I was determined to get the native Mac OS X tools to work.
This guide will walk you through the basic steps to join Active Directory without having to resort to using third party software.
Configure DNS Settings
One of the big roadblocks to joining Active Directory is DNS settings. In many networks DHCP won’t populate everything you need. Windows can get away with this but when we are joining our Mac we need to make sure everything is populated.
The easiest way to get everything you need is to issue a ipconfig /all from the command prompt of a Windows machine already joined:
I have bolded the important things you need to verify.
You want to make sure that all of the DNS Suffix Search List entries are listed in the “Search Domains” box pictured below:
Next verify that all of the DNS servers coming up on your Windows machine are also put into the Mac DNS servers list. On my machine I got all of the DNS servers but only one of the search domains. Make sure it matches your already joined machine!
Configure Network “Sharing” Name
Go to the Settings app on your Mac again and choose “Sharing”.
This part is easy. Set this to the computer name you are going to join the domain with. Usually the existing one will be something like “admin’s iMac”.
Prestaging AD Computer Account
Next open up Active Directory and create a new “Computer” account.
I strongly recommend keeping your Mac name to 15 characters or less. This is demonstrated in the screenshot below. If that isn’t possible then use the pre-Windows 2000 computer name when you join Active Directory or you will get an error (see Troubleshooting).
Press OK to create the Active Directory account. Now switch back to the Mac and let’s perform the bind.
Join Active Directory
Next go back to the Settings app and choose “Users and Groups”.
From here we are going to select “Login Options” in the bottom left hand of the screen. You will now see a “Network Account Server” with a Join button. Click join and fill everything out as follows:
Use your fully qualified domain name (FQDN). This is usually the same as your “Primary DNS Suffix” we got from our Windows machine. This allows us to get around any DNS configuration shenanigans.
For the Active Directory settings put in the pre-Windows 2000 computer name from the above step. If you chose a name of 15 characters or less they will both be the same.
For your AD username don’t try to use anything like DOMAINuser or user@domain. We have already fully qualified our server in the server field so this is not necessary and will cause problems. Enter it as in the example above.
Now press OK and with any luck you will be met with a screen that looks like this:
Troubleshooting
Plugin Error 10001
This is the most common error you will get when you try to join High Sierra or Mojave to Active Directory. There are a few reasons it can come up.
Apple states that your Active Directory needs to be at a functional level of Windows Server 2008 to work unless you enable “weak encryption” RC4 algorithm support in your forest. This would be a terrible idea as RC4 was broken many years ago and is a joke to crack.
However even with a functional level of 2008 I have yet to see it work regardless without prestaging the computer in Active Directory first and then attempting to join. Prestaging has fixed this error on all of the Macs I have joined to domains.
There are a few other requirements from Apple on the list that could be contributing but likely with prestaging you will be able to bind even without things like extended schema support, etc.
Plugin Error 5103
This error is frequently encountered if the name of your PC is too long. You should join the domain with the “pre-Windows 2000” computer name or even better choose a name for the Mac that is 15 characters or less.
My domain ends with .local
This is bad. Very bad. This has been a long standing issue with joining Macs to Active Directory as .local is what Apple’s own Bonjour uses by default. It used to be a matter of simply changing or disabling Bonjour but that has no longer proven effective.
Using .local has been against best practices for many years but not everyone has migrated their domains yet. Fuse free download for mac. If you are stuck in this situation and telling your sysadmins to get a grip and migrate their domain is not an option then you may have to consider a third party AD stack. Here’s a lengthy spiceworks discussion on this topic.
Download Active Directory On Macbook
Sunflower download mac os x. If you have been able to find a workaround for this issue in Mojave or High Sierra definitely drop a comment below so we can share it but I was not able to find an instance of anyone getting around this in the newer versions of OS X without going third party.
Conclusion
As long as you aren’t in a .local domain the native built-in tools should prove perfectly sufficient to join Mac OS X High Sierra and Mojave provided we use prestaging.
That being said I can only speak for the environments I have worked in. If you follow this guide and encounter additional problems definitely leave a comment below so we can get that information out there!
You should also check out Apple’s Active Directory integration guide as they cover some requirements that you may have ran into that I didn’t.