The National Library Board of Singapore (NLB) has completed the migration of 52 Windows NT Domain Controllers to a Samba-based solution in all its 26 sites nationwide. The migration exercise was initiated primarily to counter the impending support end-of-life for Windows NT by 1 January 2005, as well as to solve existing issues of non-trusted domains, due to the blocking of NetBios ports across the sites, and the lack of centralized control over the 26 sites.

At the core of the solution designed and implemented by Resolvo Systems is a Linux Master Authentication Server, comprised of Samba and OpenLDAP and set up at the Network Operation Centre (NOC). Slave servers with a similar setup are implemented across the rest of the sites. It is through the NOC that centralized control and administration of each location's domain controller is accomplished.

The migration implementation started in March 2004 and took 4 months to complete. In total, more than 1000 Windows workstations are migrated to the new architecture.

For more info, see Resolvo' Case Profile (PDF file).

Story by Chan Ying Yip.