University of Michigan Directory Services Ellen Vaughan Mike La Haye
5/12/99csg workshop Directory umich Where we are today Where we’ve been Where we’re headed….
5/12/99csg workshop Directory umich Scope of service… –Online Directory (X.500) White pages Mail delivery –Vendor Directories Novell NDS Notes ADS
5/12/99csg workshop Online umich Statistics (as of April 26,1999) –Entries 224,498 People 166,921 Groups 56,254 Other 1,324
5/12/99csg workshop Online umich Sample service statistics (Monday April 26,1999) Search requests 957,000 Modify requests2,483 Adds188
5/12/99csg workshop Online umich Choices made… –Schema –Source data mail routing killer application Facilitated user migration from mainframe
5/12/99csg workshop Source Data Issues Data Ownership Feeds from administrative sources –HR/payroll/SCDB –Paper directory issues –Common vocabulary
5/12/99csg workshop Data Maintenance Expiration Termination Affiliation duration Purging
5/12/99csg workshop Data Management User modification of individual entries User creation of groups Unidirectional / Bidirectional updates
5/12/99csg workshop Data Privacy –Information about individuals –Information about groups Group Spamming Personal harassment Exposure of sensitive information Organizational Privacy
5/12/99csg workshop More Data Issues Naming conventions –Standards –Unambiguous data requests Understanding what you’re getting Upstream changes to source data
5/12/99csg workshop Unique Entity Identifier Short comings of hierarchical org model –Implicit organizational membership Managing users with multiple roles Managing users with changing roles
5/12/99csg workshop LDIF: the sneaker net for meta directories?
5/12/99csg workshop Vendor Specific Directories Novell NDS Lotus Notes Microsoft Windows NT Banyan StreetTalk
5/12/99csg workshop NDS 25,000 active users Primarily staff and faculty Single campus directory –Highly partitioned –delegated administration Vendor provided base schema Vendor provided schema extensions
5/12/99csg workshop NDS Futures Being adopted by the Medical Center –50% campus installed base of Novell products –15,000 GroupWise users –Need better institutional data Looking at NDS v8 –more scalable –better performance
5/12/99csg workshop Windows NT Exchange address book –Tools developed to import LDIF –Looking toward Active Directory Active Directory –Populating with LDIF extract today –Modified LDIF as opposed to schema –reasonable performance for searching
5/12/99csg workshop Lotus Notes 3000 Active users today Looking to better integrate R5 with campus security and directory infrastructure
5/12/99csg workshop Building Bridges Stock deployments of vendor products Central vs. delegated administration Central management of accounts Synchronization of user attributes Synchronization of groups Can meta directories help?
5/12/99csg workshop Directory umich Lessons learned: how to know what you’re getting….. Avoid Miscommunication Wrong assumptions Ambiguous requests