[Samba] I've gone full circle now, let's start over

[Steve Campbell]

When I started considering Samba, the main objective was to have a way 
for our users to log into something and map the shares they required 
based on their group (departmental) needs. As I asked more questions, 
most recommended AD as this would allow the administrator to manage 
these users.

Now that I find I'll probably need VMs to handle the AD/DC and the 
shares because I only have two servers to work with, I have to ask:

Is there another way I can accomplish this without AD and Samba4?

Managing users is not a big deal for me as I admin our mail servers, and 
every email account gets a Linux user account. There are plenty of tools 
to deal with account management - I use Webmin. But I'm retiring in a 
few months, and I have to pass on the Linux responsibilities to a new 
person, and Samba user management is all new to us here.

The main problem is still how to have users log on to their machine and 
have their drives mapped to the shares without user intervention.

Clues?

steve campbell