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If you have Windows servers, you can try to find some ways to leverage Active Directory (AD). If you have Linux servers, maybe you can piece together some Chef or Puppet scripts or even take the step of deploying Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). The problem is a lot easier to solve without any cross-platform user management issues. Furthermore, the cloud can make it challenging to have a centralized user management system. DevOps and IT admins already know that the addition of a platform more than doubles the amount of work. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t have the luxury of being homogenous or on-prem anymore.
A Centralized User Management System
Customers and colleagues have told JumpCloud® about this key source of pain countless times. We started with supporting Linux servers for our user management functionality, but last year we created a prototype for Windows. Our kind friends at Clip Interactive have been putting it through its paces, and they have helped us iron out some issues. Consequently, we are proud to announce general availability of our user management functionality for Windows servers! JumpCloud will support Windows Server 2008 and 2012. One identity can be used across both platforms. Windows servers can be mixed and matched in a tag which is how JumpCloud groups systems and users together. Hence, a dev tag or QA tag could contain both Linux and Windows systems. Those users associated with that tag would now have access to both types of machines. A centralized, virtual, and cloud-based identity provider is the result. Pretty cool, huh?
Give JumpCloud’s Directory-as-a-Service a Try
Adding Windows support without requiring AD is a huge advancement for organizations. Think cloud Active Directory replacement. No need to spend time with complicated AD setup, configuration and management or taking the time consuming task of building LDAP to make a heterogeneous environment work. Simply sign-up for JumpCloud’s Directory-as-a-Service®, deploy the agents in a couple of minutes, setup users, and you are off and running. A mixed environment could be up and going within 5 to 10 minutes. Not too shabby in a world where conventional wisdom is cross platform adds a significant amount of time!
