What are the advantages of Active Directory over FBA?

Question

I am on FBA (Claim-based) Authentication and plan to migrate to Active Directory. My System is SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites. I want to know what additional benefits I will gain if I migrate to Active Directory? Is it a simple process?

Thanks!!

Answer 1

A few benefits around having straight AD over a different auth store via FBA

• Security behind AD is intense. Microsoft's entire enterprise of applications all utilize AD for security.
• Allows for client integration, so opening word doc from a library will keep the file connected to sharepoint. This is a little more complex with FBA
• assuming your're using AD for internal users, you can centrally manage all your users in one auth store
• you can use AD groups in SharePoint
• easier management of single sign on and BDC connections (if you're using them)

i'm sure there's more

Answer 2

Active Directory's real benefit lies in Domain management and Integration with other programs (particularly ones like exchange).

From an internet standpoint, its pretty much as David Lozzi says, there aren't really any extraordinary benefits.

And it looks like you have already asked about how you would go about doing it... How to migrate User database from FBA to AD in SP2010

Answer 3

You say "SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites", does that mean you are talking about using SharePoint to deliver a public facing internet site?

If that is the case then you cant move to direct Windows Auth/NTLM without FBA. You need to be able to authenticate over the internet and NTLM wont do that.

If you are using SP within your network then it is a different story all together and direct AD/Windows Auth will work fine.