9. Conclusion

The next time you log in to your workstation, your home directory will be mounted from the Linux file server. By configuring your Active Directory users and computers to mount their home directories from this server, you can share the same home directory between both Windows and Linux workstations. This allows a user to work comfortably at any Windows or Linux workstation in your enterprise without having to worry about keeping home directories synchronized. Throw in some disk imaging software, and you can deploy this Linux image throughout your enterprise.

The RID backend solution with a Linux file server provided the most functionality with the least amount of instability. With this setup, users gain true roaming home directories, Windows users aren't bothered by dot file clutter, disk I/O performance beats those of Windows shares, ACLs are honored on all workstations, UID and GID mappings are consistent on all workstations, and all account management tasks are centralized to the intuitive Active Directory management consoles.