I've got a law office of about 12 attorneys and 22 total users. Their email is hosted (Kerio), the workstations are XP Pro with Office 2003 (soon to be replaced with win7 boxes with Office 2010) and their servers (3 total) are win 2003 virtualized in a fairly complex server room. All they've got going on is file & print, Juris for accounting (3 users) and a calendaring app called Abacus law (running from an old 2000 install on a vm). Couldn't they do without AD? Couldn't they switch it up to a pair of mac mini's or something much simpler? I mean, the complexity is eating them alive and I can't help but think theres a much better way. Has anyone ever been through the process of downgrading someone out of a domain / AD setup? Should I tackle this? What would be the best way to secure the centralized files if I did this? Thanks!
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Even with just a dozen users, an AD domain should simplify things unless it's poorly managed. – Ryan Ries Mar 13 '13 at 03:33
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"the complexity is eating them alive" - which complexity? – Hauke Laging Mar 13 '13 at 04:25
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I would continue to use Active Directory in this scenario.
Can you elaborate on the pain-points of the current setup? What seems complex and what are the user-felt experiences with the setup?
I have 8-user Active Directory installations, and they benefit from the central auth/management and policies like folder redirection. There's no downside to this type of setup, as there's a deep pipeline of Windows engineers who can help establish the initial configuration properly.
I'd reach out to a consultant to help develop a migration path. This doesn't appear to be a complex situation.
ewwhite
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Hi, thanks for the reply. The pain is that it breaks sometimes and it can't be completely fixed when it breaks. I've seen a lot of ghosts over the years (16 years) and I've always been told by the MCSE's that once AD breaks its never really right again until you completely start over. Starting over is hard and expensive and it's difficult to find good help if you don't want to sign long contracts with local IT companies... you're not their priority but yet your whole company is down. Those are some LONG expensive days. – LegalGeek Mar 13 '13 at 04:21
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1@LegalGeek You're assuming the MCSEs know anything, which may or may not be the case. I prefer to ask experts, a group which doesn't often intersect with MCSE... – Michael Hampton Mar 13 '13 at 09:23
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Thanks, sounds like perhaps I've just gotten bad information and should drill down a little farther with this. – LegalGeek Mar 16 '13 at 20:28