SMB "home drive" mounts not being auto-mounted at ldap login, Mounts setup in User-group profiles
I'm beginning to form my own answers on this, but the full understanding will take a lot of research and log review, so please edit, post other answers, and/or comments here!

In an older guide for OSX Server, I've read these comments, but surely rather than being required to allow guest access to those shares, a local account on the Server can mount them, or maybe that information is from before the authenticated-mounting made its way to OSX:


  Be sure to enable guest access both for the share point and for the
  protocol under which it is shared.
  
  Note: Automounted share points are available to clients only when their computers start up.


One element of this problem can be explained by reading over the Open LDAP documentation, which Apple's Open Directory is based on.  I have seen from time to time, at least once of the messages they describe, in the Open Directory logs.

Deep within OSX there may be inconsistencies of BerkleyDB versions, which for the simple-end-user in a perfect world could be resolved between the ideal combination of versions of OSX on the client, OSX (on the server), and Server.app or other changeable componts, also on the server.

from the link: 


  C.2.9. ldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Can't contact LDAP server (-1)
  
  Using SASL, when a client contacts LDAP server, the slapd service dies
  immediately and client gets an error :

 SASL/GSSAPI authentication started ldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Can't contact LDAP server (-1) Then check the slapd service, it stopped.

  
  This may come from incompatible of using different versions of
  BerkeleyDB for installing of SASL and installing of OpenLDAP. The
  problem arises in case of using multiple version of BerkeleyDB.
  Solution: - Check which version of BerkeleyDB when install Cyrus SASL.
  
  Reinstall OpenLDAP with the version of BerkeleyDB above.
  http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin24/appendix-common-errors.html