IT Pro Momentum Program Results – Anon Company 11

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ITProMomentum

Public disclosure of your name and company name allowed? (Yes or No)  No, for now at least.

Objectives of the project: What problem did you set out to solve? I was looking at the possibility of migrating Samba directory service to Active Directory Service.

Are you piloting or deploying the products?   Deployment would definitely follow if the project would be a success.

Products used in the project (all that apply):   The plan was to use Hyper-V hosted on Windows Server 2008.

Project description:   The objective was to transparently migrate existing Samba users to Active Directory.  Sounds easy but it turned out very frustrating because the version of Samba  currently in use does not support even NTDS syncronization. Another factor was, instead of using Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008, I end up using Virtual PC 2007 SP1 instead due to budgetary constraints(I was not able to purchase the required hardware).

Were the objective stated at the beginning satisfied? Did you solve the problem? I was not able to meet my objective but I'm determined to finding a solution.

Are you going to save money? How much over how many years? My aim in pursuing the project is two-fold. First is to determine the best way to manage our network infrastructure, I'm looking at Active Directory Services but the financial capacity of the institution I am currently serving is very limited hence the use of Free and Open Source Software in the enterprise. However, for companies that have the financial prowess to invest in a Windows-based network infrastructure but could not make the migration due to lack of technical solution to migrate their existing Samba directory service to ADS, my aim is to provide the IT community a free and cost-effective solution. 

What do you think about the IT Pro Momentum program? Would you have done this project without the IT Pro Momentum program? Great I know is an understatement to describe the program. Be given access to a wealth of technologies to experiment , learn and implement is simply indescribable. I could not have done my initial tests had I not been given the opportunity to be part of the program. Thank you Keith for the privilege.  Suggestion: Because  there are places like here in the Philippines where most of the small and medium businesses still run a Windows NT 4.0 based infrastructure (running either Windows NT 4.0 or Samba), it really would help if older systems be made available for download as well.