A customer asked if it's possible to authenticate windows users (on XP or Win7 machines) against an eDirectory server to be able to open a session on a Windows 2008 server.
Let me try to clarify my setup:
+--------+ +------------+ +---------+
| Win XP |-- ask permision -->| eDirectory |-- connects ->| Win2008 |
+--------+ +------------+ +---------+
eDirectory contains the centralized list of users/passwords that can connect to many servers in the company, including this Win2008. My customer wants to log-in to a Windows XP machine with some credentials, then be able to open a session in Win2008 to use a specific program.
If this is possible, could you give me some pointers on how can this be accomplished?.
The functionality you're looking for is called Domain Services for Windows. I haven't used Novell products in ages and I can't tell you anything about the compatibility or reliability of this functionality. It looks like they're leveraging Samba (and, probably, proprietary code) to emulate an Active Directory domain.