Identity Matters

At last we've wrapped everything up, and the new version 4.0 of Symlabs Virtual Directory Server and Symlabs LDAP Proxy is now official, so I can finally take a moment to elaborate on the Remote Administration Server (RAS) feature that I briefly mentioned last time.

"In the beginning ... was the command line" (an interesting, but a bit outdated essay by famous author Neal Stephenson) is the best way to describe how our family of products started. A long time ago (in a galaxy far away) Symlabs began with an extremely fast and robust multi-protocol proxy engine, designed to give large LDAP deployments functionalities that existing LDAP servers could not provide. It was impressive by itself, and it has become the "core engine" of our products today, since its extensive programming capability has allowed us to keep on building new features and functions. Even now, we're pretty sure that we have barely scratched the surface of what can be done with that engine.

But, let's face it, it was not the easiest tool to configure and work with - its extreme "command line" approach was bucking the trend that most enterprises were following. That's why we created DSGUI, our name for a Java-based graphical user interface that makes managing configurations much easier. DSGUI allows end users to start working with both Symlabs LDAP Proxy and Symlabs Virtual Directory Server in a matter of minutes. This feature has allowed us to serve more than the "big IT & Telco" shops that had the resources to work without a GUI, and has been a success from the start for a wide range of customers.

But, the addition of DSGUI was not without some resistance, as a few developers (let's call them "Masters of the command-line", from now on - MOTCL) still hold the idea that graphical interfaces are for the weak and feeble. Still, DSGUI's success helped demonstrate that MOTCL are not always right (some may say never, but that's another story), so after we shipped it we decided to take the next step and listen to more customer feedback about how to continue improving the usability of our products. And, that's how our Remote Administration Server (RAS) functionality came to be.

RAS lets us take full advantage of the graphical user interface and at the same time adapts our products to fit in all possible environments, even those that do not have a graphical environment for some reason. It gives end users the ability to manage Symlabs LDAP Proxy and Symlabs Virtual Directory Server configurations regardless of where they are installed, and also allows them to deal with several instances at the same time. So, if an environment has six different instances of Symlabs LDAP Proxy running, let's say four in the local data center and two in different parts of the country, RAS allows them all to be managed from one place.

Think of RAS as a "connector" between the core engine I described earlier and the DSGUI graphical configuration utility. It works as a daemon process running on the server along with the core engine, communicating between any instance of the core engine in Symlabs LDAP Proxy or Symlabs Virtual Directory Server, and any instance of DSGUI.

OK, so that's a bit about where RAS came from and basically what it is. Next time, I'll finish this discussion with a more in-depth explanation of how to actually use RAS and DSGUI to simplify configuration and management chores in a complex environment. Meanwhile, I'll refer to my earlier comment and recommend that you fill some spare time with Neal Sthephenson's book "Cryptonomicon", which should be mandatory reading for anyone working in the security and identity management field.

Fernando García Vegas