If you are an IT manager at a company or organization that uses Active Directory for the Windows clients on the network, you may be curious to know how to bind OS X clients to the Active Directory server as well.
Joining The Domain
To join your Active Directory domain, simply just login onto the Mac you wish to bind to the server as a local administrator. From there, open up System Preferences. In System Preferences, go to Users & Groups. In this menu you will want to navigate and select Login Options. You may need to unlock the menu by clicking the lock button and authenticating with your local administrator username and password.
Once you have authenticated and unlocked the menu for editing, press Join next to Network Account Server. This will bring up a new window that allows you to enter the address of the Active Directory Domain Server. This is also the same steps that need to be taken if you are going to be binding to an Open Directory Server. Open Directory is Apple’s directory service, which is available in OS X Server.
Once you have entered the address of the server, just press OK and follow the next couple steps.
Customizing The Login Window
If you go to Users & Groups in System Preferences and navigate to the Login Options menu again, there will be an option that allows either a list of users or name and password at the login screen. You may want to select name and password to be selected. This way when users come to the login screen they simply just enter their username and password to login.
Another way to customize the login screen is by displaying a message. This can be done by going into the Security & Privacy menu in System Preferences and then under the General tab there is an option to Set Lock Message. You may need to authenticate to unlock to be able to set the message. This way you can display a message that says your company or organization name or instructions to login. It can be whatever you wish.
There are more options that can be set such as Mobile accounts and syncing files. These instructions are simply just for binding the OS X client machine to the directory server.
We hope that this blog has been helpful for you, if you have any questions, please leave a comment for us in the comments below.