Quick way to bind CentOS 7/Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Active Directory

Using SSSD it’s relatively easy to bind a CentOS 7 or Red Hat Enteprise Linux 7 to Active Directory service.

Install the needed binaries:

yum install realmd sssd adcli

Discover the domain:

realm discover YOURDOMAIN

Join the domain:

realm join YOURDOMAIN

Check if the domain was correctly joined:

realm list

Configuration can be found in the SSSD configuration file:

/etc/sssd/sssd.conf

To set up security by allowing only a specific group to access the server with Active Directory, you can edit the configuration file and change the access provider like this:

access_provider = simple
simple_allow_groups = YOUR-AD-GROUP

If you need to allow only specific users, you can do the same with this configuration:

access_provider = simple
simple_allow_users = YOUR-USER1, YOUR-USER2,...

Many other ways can be used to restrict users, you can check the SSSD man page for more information.