Migration of NIIT’S File, Print and Proxy Server from Microsoft Windows Platform to Open Source Linux Platform

Abstract

This project is related to the emerging field of enterprise network management. Enterprise networks are more related to the deployment and proper usage of enterprise softwares rather then their development. Our institution NIIT has deployed many of the Microsoft technologies to serve the needs of the organization. Enterprise softwares like Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft File server and Microsoft Print server are being used presently. The disadvantage of this approach is that because Microsoft doesn’t support other open source operating systems like Red Hat Linux, Sun Solaris etc. Organizations who would like to have a heterogeneous environment where all platforms are used would be unable to do so if there core enterprise technologies are Microsoft based. In this project I have tried to come up with a solution where I have unified the user password logon pair for the whole organization. No matter which service a user accesses, organizational email account, file server, print server etc, a user will use the same user name password pair regardless of the underlying operating system being used. Until now students were unable to use Linux because the system administration team could not manage two separate user accounts for every student. As a result students were only restricted to Microsoft Windows. This was a big disadvantage to the learning environment of the institute.