July / August Update August 16, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: General, Service Interruption, 1 commentTags: Access-Manager, GO, novell, shibboleth, UK Federation
It’s been a while since my last post so I thought I’d add a quick update. Edge Hill has now joined the UK Federation, we are due to install our Shibboleth server in the next two weeks. We have some challenges ahead of us in the next few weeks. The biggest of these challenges is providing services during the scheduled site wide power outages in September. Another big challenge will be the implementation of Novell’s Access Manager, this will form part of the new GO portal that is currently being developed by the Web Services Team. We are also due to draw up some hardware specifications for the VMware project. September will see an on-site trial of the Sun Ray client devices.
It’s hard to keep thinking of interesting titles ! July 27, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: General, Service Interruption, 2 commentsTags: athens, core-services, Identity-Management, novell, shibboleth
Our application to join the UK Federation has been processed and on Wednesday EH become a member of the UK Federation. We are currently testing out our Shibboleth server and in the next week or so we will be hooking it up to the UK Federation. In the next few weeks we will be working with Learning Services to implement federated access to the Athens resources. Just as a random thought, I quite like the word Shibboleth, it’s much better than using an acronym like IDM, SOAP or some kind of code like ISO9001. Shibboleth can be shortened to Shib if your feeling a bit lazy or you can’t remember how to spell it, Shibby if your looking for a name for your cat, or if your feeling a bit light headed after too much caffeine – ShibbyWibbyWoo!
If you interested in the origins of the word Shibboleth look no further than Wikipedia. Have a look, it really is quite interesting.
The work scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday) will pave the way for the new version of GO. We will be simplifying the Identity Management Systems we currently have in place. What will this mean for the users ? Well users won’t really see anything different as this work will be done on the behind the scenes stuff. From next week there will be fewer user password problems and fewer problems logging in. The changes will also make it easier for the IT help desks to resolve your network account problems. Once the weekend work is complete we will be moving onto implementing Novell Access Manager This will also form part of the new version of GO.
There is a group of us going to visit Sun Microsystems on Tuesday. We are going to see the Sun Ray thin client devices. I’ve mentioned these devices in a previous post. It is quite possible that EH users will see machines like these (or something similar) replacing PCs on desktops around the institution. I’ll post something here when we get back.
