Entries by Suretec

OpenLDAP 2.4.9 is out and is a must upgrade...lots and lots of replication fixes.

Suretec is now a member of the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce

Suretec can now report that Symas, using MySQL’s NDB API, have developed an OpenLDAP backend which talks directly to the MySQL cluster storage engine, completely bypassing the SQL layer, in association with MySQL of course.

Others think this is good news too.

It is already Open Source and will be committed to the main OpenLDAP codebase when ready. (when is the PostgreSQL one out! )

Suretec^®

Posted to the OpenLDAP development list:

The OpenLDAP Project is tentatively planning on hosting
a developers' day conference in Dublin, Ireland in late July / early August (most likely weekend of August 2-3, and August 4).

Those interested in speaking at the conference are
encouraged to contact with a
specific proposal (title, abstract, duration). Discounts
will be available to speakers.

A formal (and more widely distributed) call for participation
will be made once conference details are firmed up a bit
(like we fix the date...).

Full e-mail.

See you there!

Suretec is now a member of the trade body for the information and communications technologies (ICT) industry in Scotland.

Suretec saw a sneak peak before it was out, but we're glad to say it's unchanged and a cracker!

Have a read:

OpenLDAP is unmatched by any other directory service, proprietary or open source. Of all the others available, the proprietary ones are just hiding their dirty laundry and all of them are just a waste of time and money.

Want OpenLDAP for your Enterprise? Then contact the UK Leading OpenLDAP Experts.

Suretec^®

Suretec Director Gavin Henry will be presenting at Spring 2008 - a UKUUG Conference on OpenLDAP 2.4 Improvements:

OpenLDAP has been replacing proprietary directory server offerings in business critical areas at an increasing pace. This is largely due to its performance and scalability, dynamic configuration capabilities and flexible extensibility via bundled modules.

In this talk, an overview of the latest OpenLDAP 2.4 offering will be given and the numerous new features and improvements since the 2.3 release cycle will be discussed.

This is not just a talk about the list of changes since the 2.3 release cycle, it will also briefly cover how these features and changes can be put into practice in various scenarios and how they can help your project or product.

See you there!

Suretec^®

Why is Symas OpenLDAP different from OpenLDAP source?

Symas OpenLDAP is a binary distribution that installs using the native OS installation tools for your platforms and is packaged, tested, and ready to run in any environment from small intranets to the largest enterprises and extranets.

This is the current beta version of Symas OpenLDAP, based on OpenLDAP 2.4.x. It supports dynamic configuration, SSL (TLS) link encryption, SSL and SASL authentication, and includes the high-performance Berkeley DB backends, back-bdb and back-hdb.

Silver is available for free, Gold requires a subscription.

Contact Suretec for more information.

It's been an interesting week to say the least. First we see some very good discussion in the Symas My Old Flame post, then we discover Fedora Directory Server is less stable/desirable as a back end for Red Hat.

Let's put this into context, first Red Hat attack OpenLDAP, but yet they won't eat their own dog food:

We had been basing our application on fedora-ds, during the last year
we've seen great changes in this application and how its packaged. This has
made it less stable/desirable as a back end. All signs point to using
postgres on the back end as being both the easier choice and the more
reliable choice based on what we've seen.

Red Hat do a lot of great things, but why don't they do what they preach and collaborate with a proper LDAP^[?] Project and get real value out of that work and not waste time and money on a dead end project.

Suretec^®

Suretec presenting at British Computer Society Aberdeen Branch

See you there!

UBUNTU LINUX for Server Networks in Science and Business - Flyer

Tony Travis will describe and demonstrate Ubuntu Linux as used in the EU NuGO Black Box (NBX) project, which he leads. This aims to provide an easy way to deploy a network of 'lab-scale' bioinformatics servers as web-based 'appliances' pre-loaded with useful tools. They can all be accessed either using a web browser or remote desktop login, or via SOAP-based web services. The NBX can be installed easily from CD, and uses FLOSS^[?] (Free/Libre Open Source Software).

Gavin Henry is on the Executive Council of the Open Source Consortium representing Scotland. He is also part of the OpenLDAP Engineering Team and avid FLOSS contributor.

He will discuss real life Case Studies on the use of Open Source software for SMEs and other Enterprises, aiming to reassure new users.

Date : 13th February, 2008
Time : 18:00 for 18:30
Venue : RGU, St Andrews St

See you there!

Suretec^®

This was posted in reply to our post A Common Weakness in all Identity Management Products", but not OpenLDAP:

It is interesting to see how a thread on how identity provisioning tools and their lack of true interoperability with Active Directory gets twisted into a discussion on the merits of OpenLDAP. What is interesting is that the comparison is solely technical and doesn't provide any rationale related to how much it would cost to maintain OpenLDAP vs ADAM^[?].

Hmmm, the Symas paper we referenced does indeed discuss the cost to maintain OpenLDAP on pages 6 and 7 of the paper

You will also notice mention of one and only one Fortune enterprise that uses it as their primary directory service. Of course, the mentioned company is in the consulting business so this isn't surprising. Maybe the mention of a bank or retailer in the Fortune ranks is in order. I suspect the economics nor the customer base simply aren't their...

It's more to do with the fact both Suretec and Symas aren't allowed to say. Have a look at Key Relationships or again, contact either Suretec or Symas.

So, it's been a few days, but we thought this was worth commenting on.

Asterisk 1.6 beta brings many new changes and exciting features, but one very disappointing thing missing was the LDAP^[?] Realtime Driver.

This is mainly down to the code not being moved forward for the 1.6 branch, as it was written for the 1.4 branch and testing.

For those of you out there that would love to see Asterisk integrated with your enterprise directory server, we urge you to subscribe to the tracker and help test.

The Amanda 2.6.0 beta release offers some excellent new features. Ones that appeal to Suretec are:

• A Perl Interface


• Encryption methods (various techniques have been available previously) - Simple and GPG

There of course many other excellent additions and fixes.

So, why is the Perl Interface so cool? Well, a while ago we asked about using the Perl interface for use with an LDAP^[?] Configuration Backend, but at that time Amanda wasn't ready.

The Perl interface is a great addition and easy to understand why it was needed.

We'll keep you updated on how the betas progress and when we start hacking up an LDAP interface

Binaries and source can be downloaded from Zmanda.

Howard Chu from Symas and Chief Architect of OpenLDAP has just finished some interesting benchmarks of Isode's M-Vault 14 versus OpenLDAP:

I recently tested Isode's M-Vault 14. For the most part there were no surprises, we were 5-6 times faster on the 1M entry DB. Load times were comparable, with OpenLDAP at around 3 minutes (as before) and Isode at around 4 minutes. While OpenLDAP delivered over 29,000 auths/sec using 8 cores, Isode delivered only 4600 auths/sec. (And there's still the interesting result that OpenLDAP delivered almost 31,000/sec using only 7 cores, leaving one core reserved for the ethernet driver.)

But interestingly: