Active Directory is Microsoft's trademarked directory service, an integral
part of the Windows 2000 architecture. Like other directory services, such as
Novell Directory Services (NDS), Active Directory is a centralized and standardized
system that automates network management of user data, security, and distributed
resources, and enables interoperation with other directories. Active Directory
is designed especially for distributed networking environments.
BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is an implementation of the Domain Name
System (DNS) protocols. In practice BIND maps all ip adressses into hostnames
(e.g. www.linuxdoc.org) and/or reverse.
In that case, you're in luck! By using Windows 2000 as the primary DC and Linux BIND as the caching server for Active Directory information you have a smooth running network.
Prior experience of Linux is highly recommended. Sections not covered in detail are; Bind-HOWTO and How to set up Active Directory on Windows 2000 based server.
Although there's very little information about Bind + AD out on the 'net, there are a some sites that provide usefull information. The ones I found are lostinfo.com, Nominum and of course the isc.org mailing list, but I'm sure there are more out there.
Thanks to Magnus Skjegstad (magnus@skjegstad.com) for working on the thought, and for debugging the in-production solution.
Comments and/or supplemental information would be greatly appreciated since
BIND + AD is still a work-in-progress. Just because the integration has been
succesfull in my case, doesn't necessarily mean it'll work 100% for everybody.
You can reach me at isi@efnet.no, but please
put "BIND+AD - comments/suggestion/addons" in the Subject line so
that my filters can sort them correctly.
This document is based on the use of Windows 2000 AD services and Berkley's BIND 9.2.0. If you haven't implemented Bind9 onto your servers yet and don't want to, don't despair. Bind 8.2.2 and later supports the locator records (SRV RR's (Resource Records)) which is needed to use Dynamic Updates (Q232025).
Copyright (c) 2002 by Johan Fredrik Juell. This document may be distributed
under the terms set forth in the LDP license at
http://www.linuxdoc.org/COPYRIGHT.html.
The author takes no responsibility for any damage or loss of data as a result
of reading this document. This is merely intented as a guideline. In other words,
you break it, you buy it ;)