[Samba] Upgrading Samba 3 to Samba 4 with Active Directory at many sites

[Luke Barone]

Just wondering if anyone is able to give some advice with this?
On May 25, 2016 1:28 PM, "Luke Barone" <lukebarone at gmail.com> wrote:

> First, background information. We are a large (geographically local)
> organization with 50 sites, including our HQ. Each site has a Debian Server
> running Samba in NT-Domain Controller mode. Each site is independant of the
> next, but are all named <SITE>.example.com. The workstations are
> connected, and working fine in our sites with the single servers.
>
> We had a recent network upgrade that now has every site with a 10.X.Y.Z
> address. X is the site code, so each site is in the same 10.0.0.0/8
> subnet, and we can see the networks from each site. Now is the time to
> setup Active Directory, right?
>
> My goal is to create a forest, starting at the HQ (HQ.example.com) level,
> and working down to each site (SITEA.example.com, SITEB.example.com,
> etc). Our goal is to upgrade to Active Directory at each location, so as to
> not lose any of the user data (username/passwords, group memberships, etc),
> and then merge the AD Domains into a hierarchial forest, with each of the
> techs responsible for the domain at their sites. We are hoping that it will
> also allow us to have a user's primary DC (I know that term isn't use, but
> let's say it's the site's main one) down, but still authenticate to another
> trusted domain controller.
>
> Will Samba 4 allow us to do this? If so, is it simply a process of 1)
> Upgrade role to Active Directory Domain Controller, 2) Use Active Directory
> Sites and Services to link each of the 50 domains together? Or is there
> more to it that we need to work on first?
>