Moving from OD with WGM to AD with Casper MCX

[marktaylor]

Hi, we are planning to move our authentication from LDAP to AD and use Casper to manage the machine preferences. We like the control we get from WGM and I would like to know if anyone else has made this switch and still kept a tight level of control on the machines.
I would love to hear your experiences.
Thanks
Mark

[talkingmoose]

I'm a big fan of Casper's MCX support. It works well and I've only had a couple of things ever hiccup. I've got fixes for those.

We never used OD for MCX because I didn't want to support a golden triangle setup. About the time I wanted to start using MCX JAMF offered this support.

I choose Casper's MCX as my first means of managing machine settings. Some of my managed groups have up to 90 settings that I apply. I'll use scripting or packaged preference files where MCX won't work. Those are few and far between for me.

[tsd25108]

We previously used the golden triangle method, and had quite a few issues with machines staying bound to both directories. Last year we finally switched to Casper and AD binding and continued using MCX, as we'd previously used WGM to deploy MCX, with it and have been happy with the results thus far.

[marktaylor]

We were looking to start with the golden triangle but maybe that's not the best option! Is anyone willing to share a managed preference manifest with us so we can have a look at the things you are controlling.
Which is the best way to get our existing WGM settings into Casper?

[j99mac]

I am also thinking about moving from WGM to Casper MCX. I dose a little bit of testing and have found logonwindow preference to not work when macs are bound to AD. Also I found that a local admin became manged. How hamas everyone handled different user level rights? Example I would like one user to beable to login and have some system preference frayed out. And when another user logs in they see all preferences.

[myronjoffe]

Take a look at this discussion also:
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=3747

[jarednichols]

To me, a solution shouldn't have the word "magic" in the name as magic implies that you don't know how it works.

From times that I've run into it, I've had the impression that magic triangle setups felt a bit like they were stuck together with duct tape and chewing gum. Not ideal.