Note: Acronis testing shows the  Network Home Directory feature of macOS no longer works in macOS 13 Ventura macOS 12 Monterey macOS 11 Big Sur  macOS 10.15 Catalina The last fully patched macOS version to work with Network Home Directories is macOS 10.14 Mojave.  This is not specific to AFP, SMB homes also no longer work.

Summary:

By default, the Active Directory plug-in on Macintosh OS X clients (version 10.3.3 and later) will use the SMB protocol when mounting a user's network share point and will mount it as a separate volume on the desktop. Simple modifications to the Active Directory plug-in settings allow the home directory identified in the Active Directory user's profile to be used as a network home folder.

Description:

The following steps need to be performed to set up the server and clients for Active Directory integrated network home directories:

1. Set up the folder hierarchy on the Windows server with appropriate permissions and share the directory using Acronis Files Connect (formerly ExtremeZ-IP).
2. Add the home directory to the users' profiles.
3. Bind the client computer to the domain using the Directory Setup application or the command line dsconfigad utility.
4. Using dsconfigad, set the client's mount style to AFP and disable localhome.

For best results you should be using Acronis Files Connect 3.2.1 or later. Using Acronis Files Connect 3.2.1 or later a user will only see their own home folder and not any of the other users' folders. Using the latest version of Mac OS X is also recommended. There have been several changes in later versions of Mac OS X that make the mounting of network home directories much more reliable. More detailed instructions on how to perform the steps above for Mac OS X 10.4 can be found in the PDF form of this article.

Related Document:

• PDF/PPT Description: How to create Active Directory integrated home directories.