Migrating from NT/Exchange?

[Anonymous]

I recently became the IT manager for a company that runs a backend of 2 NT domain controllers and an Exchange server. The stuff is pretty old and the network in general is pretty outdated. I am looking for inexpensive solutions to move this network into the present and OS X Server is intriguing to me since I have been a life long Mac user. I have a number of questions about the migration.

1 – It seems that Apple will be making a big push for NT orphans with 10.4. I am not too experienced with NT or Exchange so would waiting for 10.4 make the migration significantly easier for someone like me?

2 – I am looking for a solution to do the following two, which I know OS X can do: replace NT domain for user authentication purposes and replace Exchange server for email. However I want to do more with the system and I was wondering if OS X will let me do these things: have shared folders on the email server that multiple users can get to and share messages and files between, run a web mail system with SSL (this seems trivial with some PHP packages out there, but maybe OS X can do it better) implement DHCP (right now we have manual IPs for all machines) using static IPs so that all machines always have the same IP, implement local DNS server so that each machine on the network can be identified with a name that is also the same name as its NetBIOS name (this is a big inconvenience right now since Macs on the network must use IPs to connect to local machines while PCs can use NetBIOS names) – this whole IP/netbios/dns/dhcp thing I was hoping would work as a “host database” system so I can restrict access on the network to machines via hardware address and keep a good handle on all machines through this database. Can OS X do all this out of the box?

So I’m wondering what people think here. Can OS X Server do what I want it to do? What kind of hardware would I need (or, how many XServes)? Right now we have a primary domain controller, secondary domain controller and an exchange server, all running on old Compaq hardware. Would we need 3 Xserves, each one taking the place of each machine? I have heard that for DHCP servers you need to have more than one, so can these machines also do DHCP? Is that a good idea?

I really want to get this host database type system working since I previously worked in an environment that had this (I think this was all run from Solaris, with the NT domain/Active Directory integration done as an afterthought). I would really like one unified system to handle all of this simply.

Thanks for your help.

[Author]

Posts