Netgroup support in Mac OS X (Lion)

Hello,

We have a small network here with primarily OS X desktops and RHEL/CentOS servers. There is some discussion about adding some sort of central authentication/authorization server, with an eye to planning for future growth as well as gaining expertise that may be needed for some client projects.

I haven't worked with OS X in some time, however I've recently worked on a project where we implemented AD + netgroups for a windows/linux network. I thought I might be able to use this experience to do something with OpenLDAP + netgroups in the current environment, however, I found very limited information on people's experience with Netgroups in a Mac environment.

eg. this post suggests Netgroups might be problematic, but it was quite some time ago https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1281259?start=0&tstart=0

Anyone have more recent experience?

basically, I want to be able to allow/restrict users coming from Mac OS X desktops to RHEL/CentOS servers, grant/deny access to ssh, maybe Samba shares etc

I'm willing to consider Mac Open Directory, would prefer not to go the AD route.

Mac newbie question: is there an alternative to netgroups for the Mac environment, ideally that would also be compatible with linux?

Thanks,

Simon