Welcome to the Centrify Express forum. Note that if you're a commercial customer, you should post in the "Server Suite" forum. Centrify Express is a limited version of the main product.
There are several options for automation. The key is to get a Kerberos key table (keytab) of a user that is authorized to join systems in AD and if you're working with zones, the user should have "Join computers to the zone" right.
Note that the keytab creation is a one-time step, the password will be randomized for security and you can use a service account that has the "password never expires" option. Once you have the keytab, you can use it for all your automation scenarios in conjunction with a usable krb5.conf file (you can copy that file from any Centrified system).
The explanation on how to delegate rights to the AD user in AD and in the Centrify zone, plus how to create the keytab are here: http://community.centrify.com/t5/TechBlog/HOWTO-Use-Centrify-Tools-for-Public-Private-Cloud-Automation/ba-p/20369
The sequence is quite simple, you can have your script (or chef, or puppet) simply do this:
- Install CentrifyDC (or have it baked into your image) - note that Centrify has a repo for Yum, APT and Zypper.
- Use the kinit command pointing to a usable krb5.conf file to authentiate to AD using the keytab
- Use install.sh or adjoin (these commands will pick-up the credentials from the previous step to perform the join)
There are several examples in the community.
- With Scripts: http://community.centrify.com/t5/TechBlog/HOWTO-Use-Centrify-Tools-for-Public-Private-Cloud-Automation/ba-p/20369
- With Chef: http://community.centrify.com/t5/TechBlog/HOWTO-Orchestration-Basics-Using-a-Chef-recipe-to-deploy/ba-p/22023
- With Puppet: http://community.centrify.com/t5/TechBlog/HOWTO-Orchestration-Basics-Using-Puppet-standalone-to-deploy/ba-p/22976
In addition, we are publishing AWS OpsWorks, CloudFormation and Auto-Scaling scripts
R.P