Tree Merging Solutions
One of the more common problems facing enterprises today is that
identity information can often be stored in a variety of repositories.
Frequently this creates problems with regard to providing centralized
authentication and means that finding the identity for a user can become
a difficult task, involving sending numerous search queries to a
variety of repositories.
In an ideal world, all identity data should be accessible within a
single view. This would better facilitate authentication and would make
it easier to locate a particular identity. Of course, this would also
lose many of the advantages of storing data within directories in the
first place. To achieve a singular view of all users would usually
require some form of data replication and synchronization would
certainly become an issue sooner or later. The perfect solution should
be a virtual view of all users constructed on-the-fly from each
repository, and should be able to handle authentication requests as
normal.
Both
Symlabs' Virtual Directory Server and
Symlabs' LDAP Proxy
include a fully automated plugin that can handle precisely such a
scenario with minimal configuration. The Merge Trees plugin can be
inserted into any solution and can instantly consolidate the entries
stored in a number of different branches across several repositories,
presenting all of the entries as belonging to a single virtual branch.
The Merge Trees plugin can be configured to merge trees into an existing
branch, or even into a virtual branch in a virtual tree. Once you have
specified the different datasources and branches that shouldbe merged
together, the plugin will take care of rerouting each query and
collating the results, so that all of the entries in each separate
branch of presented together.
Merging different branches of users located on different servers becomes
a very simple task, that can provide a global point of authentication
for all of the applications within your enterprise. Both Symlabs' LDAP
Proxy and Symlabs' Virtual Directory Server are relatively agnostic
about the directories that you merge together. This means that you can
effectively merge users stored in an Active Directory with users stored
in an OpenDS or OpenLDAP directory, without a problem.
This powerful bundled plugin automatically resolves a number of common
problems related to data fragmentation and distribution and performs
data transformation on-the-fly so that you don't need to concern
yourself with data replication or synchronization.