Extending Direct Access to OS X

[josaxo]

Our organization is implementing the infrastructure for Microsoft's Direct Access solution, which will be leveraged on all Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines. Although this is a Windows specific solution, I started researching the possibility of extending the Direct Access service to our OS X machines. My research has not revealed much, but Centrify seems to offer the ability to integrate UNIX/Linux based server side components, but not necessarily client side solutions. Does anyone have any experience with Direct Access + OS X?

Thanks.

[alan_trewartha]

bump. would love to know if anyone had seen mac-native way to plug into direct-access infrastructure

[MikeyG_U2]

Centrify does work on the client-side as well. My company is just starting to look into this as well.

http://www.centrify.com/blogs/tomkemp/what_is_microsoft_directaccess_and_unix_linux_interoperability.asp

[dlondon]

Hi Mikey,

Interested if you could post a link about centrify other than what you already posted. That article refers to DirectSecure which is part of Centrify Server Suite, Platinum Edition. When I read through that there are no clients for Mac

Yes centrify has mac products but they seem to be for other things

Regards,

David

[merps]

@dlondon Hate to resurrect an old thread, but we're looking into this and I can't find much. Even the Centrify engineer seemed pretty clueless about it when I asked. You asked for a link, though, and I found a comment at the bottom of this blog that seems to explain the current situation.

[Shane]

We are in the same boat here. Does anyone have any new information on this.

Thank you everyone...

[laxthxdude]

DA is really nothing more than a VPN on demand connection with ties into Microsofts front end server services. It can be added to the tpm chip on the local Windows machine for additional authentication.

Things to know on DA:
Macs have no TPM
No indication Microsoft will bring DA to any other platforms Microsoft is moving away from DA even for Windows You can accomplish most of the same things using other 3rd party VPN solutions In the end, DA is really a solution that itself goes away as services simply move to the cloud Apples (and now Microsofts) solution is simply cloud based services or per App VPN

So depending on what you are trying to solve, your efforts might be better focused on getting your services to the cloud or simply doing and App with per App VPN.