University of Michigan Directory Services Ellen Vaughan evaughan@umich.edu Mike La Haye mjl@umich.edu Directory Experiences @ umich • Where we are today • Where we’ve been • Where we’re headed…. 5/12/99 csg workshop Directory Experiences @ umich • Scope of service… – Online Directory (X.500) • White pages • Mail delivery – Vendor Directories • Novell NDS • Notes • ADS 5/12/99 csg workshop Online Directory @ umich • Statistics (as of April 26,1999) – Entries 224,498 • People 166,921 • Groups 56,254 • Other 1,324 5/12/99 csg workshop Online Directory @ umich • Sample service statistics (Monday April 26,1999) • Search requests • Modify requests • Adds 5/12/99 957,000 2,483 188 csg workshop Online Directory @ umich • Choices made… – Schema – Source data – User@umich.edu mail routing • killer application • Facilitated user migration from mainframe 5/12/99 csg workshop Source Data Issues • Data Ownership • Feeds from administrative sources – HR/payroll/SCDB – Paper directory issues – Common vocabulary 5/12/99 csg workshop Data Maintenance • • • • Expiration Termination Affiliation duration Purging 5/12/99 csg workshop Data Management • User modification of individual entries • User creation of groups • Unidirectional / Bidirectional updates 5/12/99 csg workshop Data Privacy – Information about individuals – Information about groups • • • • 5/12/99 Group Spamming Personal harassment Exposure of sensitive information Organizational Privacy csg workshop More Data Issues • Naming conventions – Standards – Unambiguous data requests • Understanding what you’re getting • Upstream changes to source data 5/12/99 csg workshop Unique Entity Identifier • Short comings of hierarchical org model – Implicit organizational membership • Managing users with multiple roles • Managing users with changing roles 5/12/99 csg workshop LDIF: the sneaker net for meta directories? Uniqname User ID Human Resources Student Services DB Campus Online Directory LDIF Extract Banyan StreetTalk Novell NDS Microsoft windows NT Intelligent Messaging GroupWise Exchange 5/12/99 csg workshop Lotus Notes Vendor Specific Directories • • • • Novell NDS Lotus Notes Microsoft Windows NT Banyan StreetTalk 5/12/99 csg 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 5/12/99 csg 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 5/12/99 csg 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 5/12/99 csg workshop Lotus Notes • 3000 Active users today • Looking to better integrate R5 with campus security and directory infrastructure 5/12/99 csg 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? 5/12/99 csg workshop Directory Experiences @ umich Lessons learned: how to know what you’re getting….. Avoid Miscommunication Wrong assumptions Ambiguous requests 5/12/99 csg workshop