Directory and identity start-up UnboundID has released a free tool for Sun users to help them add missing capabilities to their directories and migrate off the platform.
UnboundID Synchronization Server provides bi-directional sync that allows users to run in parallel the Sun Directory Server and the UnboundID Directory Server as part of an overall migration away from Sun.
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Later this year, UnboundID will add synchronization for Active Directory (which Sun already provides for its directory) and database synchronization.
The Synchronization Server also includes a sophisticated replication feature that supports fractional, filtered, and partial replication between the two directories. The feature, which Sun's directory is lacking, lets users create directory instances designed for specific use-cases that contain only the data needed and not the entire contents of the master directory.
"We have provided a back-out mechanism so you can sync the changes in the old environment with the new environment or the changes in the new environment with the old environment," says Don Bowen, co-founder and vice president of marketing at UnboundID. If panic hits, Bowen says, users can cut back to their old directory system with assurances that changes, wherever they were made, are retained.
UnboundID's synchronization tool comes at a time when Sun is in transition, both with an impending acquisition by Oracle and with a majority of its user base on its aging version 5.2 directory platform. In addition, Oracle's own directory technology, which supports identity management and directory synchronization, overlaps with the Sun directory technology.
UnboundID Directory Server, which was launched in March, is based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol V3 and combines qualities found in directory and database technology to create an identity platform for large service providers and corporate networks.
The directory server is built around customizations to the OpenDS project, which was developed by the four former Sun employees who founded UnboundID.
The Synchronization Server includes real-time sync between the UnboundID and Sun directories, which lets companies run the two platforms in parallel and manage directory migration in a controlled fashion. The server also supports DN mapping, attribute mapping, and transformation. Users can modify both the directory information tree and the directory schema without scripting.
"Directory server migration is a great time to correct sins of the past," says Bowen. "In particular, addressing schema changes, attribute name changes, and object classes"
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