How To Add Mac To Windows Domain

Updated iii/4/2020

Anyone who's been faced with getting Windows and Macs to play together within the same company or team knows that information technology can be catchy. The expert news is you can join a Mac to a Windows domain past going into the organisation settings of your calculator and reformatting them to recognize a unlike IP address equally the primary domain. Follow these step-by-step instructions to finally get your Mac to speak to your Windows domain.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You come up into piece of work one day and your boss calls yous into his role and says he got a new laptop. You lot get in at his function door and realize your boss bought a Mac. He wants to exist able to access all the company files stored on your Windows domain from his new Mac. Or peradventure the scenario is a scrap unlike. Your company decides to create a new department for graphical design and marketing and all the designers apply Macs.

And then what practise you exercise? Non to worry, you can join a Mac to a Windows domain. I'm going to bear witness you how information technology's done. Permit's walk through joining Snow Leopard to a Windows Server 2008 domain.

(These are older operating systems, just these general steps should still piece of work the same on electric current systems.)

Setting Network and User Options on a Mac

Windows domains rely on DNS for Agile Directory to work correctly so the outset thing we need to practise is set a static DNS address on your Mac. We need to use the IP address of your Windows domain controller for this setting.

• Click the Apple in the top left corner and choose System Preferences.

• Click Network to open your network settings.

Now y'all should be at your Network settings screen.

Past default your network adapter is set up to DHCP. Depending on the network connectedness you are going to use you will need to modify this setting to Manually.

Keep in heed if you lot are setting a static address on your Mac and you take it to another network yous might need to alter this setting back to DHCP. I would advise using the wired or Ethernet connection for your static address and use the wireless for DHCP. In this example I am setting a static address on the Ethernet connection.

My Windows domain controller has an IP address of 192.168.1.172 so I will put this in the DNS section. I'g setting my IP address to 192.168.ane.171 for this instance. Fill in your IP address, subnet, gateway, and DNS according to your network settings.

• Click the back button to become dorsum to System Preferences.
• Choose Accounts.

• Click the Lock to make changes to these settings.
• Click the Join button side by side to Network Account Server

• Click the Open Directory Utility push

You lot should now exist at the Directory Utility

• click the Lock to brand changes
• Make sure Agile Directory is checked, highlight it, and so click the Pencil to edit this setting.

Here you can enter your domain information and figurer ID. For this example the domain is hq.examination.united states of america and the figurer ID is Mac. The figurer ID is the computer name that will show upward in Active Directory once the Mac is joined to the domain.

• Click the pointer to Bear witness Advanced Options.
  • This gives you 3 extra options you lot tin can configure. To go on it simple I usually leave these settings default except for the Authoritative section.
• Click the Authoritative button and enter the IP address or the FQDN of your domain controller in the Prefer this domain server section.
  • For this example I used the IP address of my domain controller 192.168.1.172. You tin also specify groups that are immune administration privileges.

• Click the Bind button and y'all volition be prompted for credentials.
• Enter your domain administrator username and password and click OK.

You should see it progress through steps ane-5 as you lot are authenticated and joined to the domain.

Now you should be joined to the domain and the Bind button changes to Unbind.

• Click OK and and so click Apply in the Directory Utility window.
• Close the Directory Utility. Now you should be back at the Accounts window. Note the greenish dot and domain proper name side by side to Network account server.

Logging In with Windows Credentials on Your Mac

Now yous should be able to login to the Mac with your Windows domain credentials. Log off the current user you are logged in with. When y'all become back to the login screen cull Other.

• Enter your Windows domain credentials.

That should go you logged into the estimator with your domain credentials. So now what? How exercise you access the files on the server?

We volition need to map drives to the shared folders on the server so you can admission the files.

• From Finder click Go and so click Connect to Server. Since Mac uses SMB we need to use this syntax: smb://servername/share
• Click Connect.

Annotation that y'all will not be prompted for credentials to connect because we are logged in with our domain account. You can as well connect to Windows shared folders with the aforementioned syntax and a username and password if your Mac is not joined to the domain.

Mac on Windows Domain: Is it Worth it?

Now I bet you're wondering, is this worth it?

Joining a Mac to a your domain is non for the faint of heart and can get tricky depending on your surround. In that location tin can be issues with joining Macs to a .local domain and there can also be reverse DNS bug to exist aware of. With these things in listen, there are definitely some things to consider earlier joining your Mac to a Windows domain.

Some may wonder what the benefits are of knowing how to add together a Mac to a Windows domain. It mostly helps with accessing files on your Windows server without authenticating every time. It also helps with user account management and alleviates the need to have carve up user accounts on the local Mac computer and on the Windows domain.

In my opinion, if y'all have a mobile Mac user you lot probably wouldn't join it to your domain, but would instead authenticate when needed. If you accept Mac desktop computers and multiple users logging into them and using them daily, joining them to the domain is probably a better solution. Overall information technology's upward to yous how you want to configure it but hopefully, this gives you a good baseline to start with.

Source: https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/tutorials/join-mac-to-windows-domain

Posted by: darbyacend1994.blogspot.com

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