So basically this is for a small design (print,web,etc) department that does not really have a "true" server but probably needs one.
The scenario right now is that there are 5 MacPros all running 10.5.8 -- at login they authenticate against Active Directory directly with no OSX Server in the mix to handle rights / privileges, etc. And all user info is stored locally -- which is fine. To note, this is like a subdivision of a larger all Windows site hence the Active Directory authentication -- which has proven to be less than reliable since the rest of the infrastructure is a bit sketch.
What I am looking to do is the following: Basically it's time for everyone to migrate to 10.6 and CS5 and I've also got a PowerMac G5 w. 10.5.8 available to put on the network as a fileserver with some RAID storage. What I am trying to figure out is how best to handle user accounts while also moving away from Active Directory. I have come up with the idea of having the individual machines setup such that there is a user and an admin (simple enough) with the G5 then having individual accounts set up for file sharing. So the user would just login to their own machine and then when they go to mount the server volumes it would prompt them for something more specific. i.e. their name and pass.
I suppose ideally there'd be some way to use a non-server install of osx to handle directory based services to either deal with the handshake with Active Directory or set up its own domain / workgroup within this division.
Anyone have to deal with something similar and dealt with it successfully? Anything I'm just not thinking of?
Thanks!