Profile Management

Third-party directory, authentication, and file services

This article describes support for directory, authentication, and file services other than those provided by Microsoft.

Directory services

Important: Active Directory (AD) is critical to the operation of Profile Management. Other directory services are not supported. These services include:

  • Novell eDirectory.
  • Windows 2000 server or earlier operating systems (OSs). Windows 2000 server supports AD but not at the required level; for more information, see Domain and forest support in Profile Management. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 pre-dates AD.
  • Samba 4 or earlier.

Authentication services

Other authentication services can co-exist with AD within a domain but are not supported by Profile Management. The reason is that, like the Profile Management Service, they can interact with winlogon.exe and cause problems with the user logon process. For example, the authentication service from Novell allows users to access Novell resources, such as printers and file shares, but is not supported.

File services

Third-party file services can be used for the user store and folder redirection (if supported by the Windows operating system being used). File servers must be of the type Server Message Block (SMB) or Common Internet File System (CIFS) and must support the NTFS file system. For these reasons, the following are supported:

  • Windows Server 2003 or later
  • Samba 3

Important: Because it requires authentication against the Novell directory, the Novell file service is not supported.

Third-party directory, authentication, and file services