Microsoft Identity Integration Server

There are four major components of MIIS 2003:

☛ Connected Data Sources

☛ Management Agents

☛ Connector Spaces

☛ The Metaverse

A connected data source is a system that provides information to or receives information from MIIS 2003. Many systems can act as a connected data source including directory services, databases and even individual files. The connected data sources currently supported by MIIS 2003 Service Pack 1.

The following are the minimum hardware requirements for the two servers used in this scenario:

☛ Pentium II 500.

☛ 256 MB of RAM.

☛ 8 GB hard disk.

☛ Network adapter.

☛ 4 MB video adapter.

☛ SVGA monitor (800x600) or greater resolution.

☛ Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device.

The metaverse schema contains the following default objects, but can be easily extended:

☛ Ccomputer

☛ Domain

☛ Group

☛ Locality

☛ Organization

☛ Organizational unit

☛ Person

☛ Printer

☛ Role

Passwords are one of the weakest security points in a network but the use of secure passwords can become a source of contention between administrators and users. Users would rather have nice, easy-to-remember passwords, whereas administrators want to implement more restrictive password requirements. This is of even more concern on networks with disparate directories where users may have several accounts with varying levels of password requirements to access each of these directories or services. MIIS 2003 SP1 has a number of new password management and synchronization features that can help.

The password management and synchronization capabilities help you control passwords and reduce administrative efforts:

☛ Auditing features let you track changes to or setting of passwords through the use of entries written to the Event Log.

☛ Developers have the ability to perform password management functions through an API.

☛ An administrator or a user can reset passwords through a central point or through a Web services application.

☛ Integrated third-party solutions can be used to extend the capabilities of MIIS 2003.

☛Password policies as defined in Active Directory, for example, can be enforced across other systems.

There are 5 essential tools for MIIS:

☛ MIIS 2003 Design and Planning Collection

☛ MIIS Provisioning Assistant

☛ MIIS Preview

☛ Oxford MIIS Documentor

☛ MIIS Service Monitor

Identity and access management are important issues as your business implements systems that provide corporate information to employees, business partners and customers.

Each solution introduces new applications with their own authorization requirements and potentially their own authentication mechanisms. As these disparate systems proliferate throughout an organization, managing digital identity determining when users are on-boarded, when they are off-boarded, and what privileges and access they have while active in the environment becomes an increasingly complicated process.

As a result of your design efforts, you have identified the data flow for both attributes and objects. If your design requires creating or deleting objects in connected data sources, you will need to develop a method of provisioning and deprovisioning these objects. In MIIS 2003 this means implementing that logic in a metaverse rules extension. Rules extensions are implemented as DLLs and stored in the Extensions subfolder of the MIIS root folder.

By implementing Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003, company hopes to accomplish the following two goals:

☛ Aggregate employee identity data from its five data sources while maintaining data source ownership over specific employee identity characteristics.

☛ Use data from the Exchange Server data source to populate distribution lists in the Active Directory data source.

The individual responsible for setting up the lab for this scenario should have a complete knowledge of the following:

☛ Installing and configuring Active Directory.

☛ Installing and configuring Sun ONE Directory Server 5.1 Directory Server.

☛ Installing Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Enterprise Edition.

☛ Installing and configuring Microsoft® SQL Server 2000, Enterprise Edition, with Service Pack 3 (SP3).

Instructions to install Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003:

☛ Click the file you want to download.

☛ Do one of the following:

1. To start the installation immediately, click Run.

2. To save the download to your computer for installation at a later time, click Save.

3. To cancel the installation, click Cancel.

Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 technical reference provides information about:

☛ State-based and event-based architecture

☛ Directories and identity management solutions

☛ Core components of MIIS 2003

☛ Architecture and internal structure of MIIS 2003

☛ Objects and data flow in MIIS 2003

☛ Updated system port information for MIIS 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

☛ Updated information for management agent minimum rights and permissions

Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 is most commonly employed to integrate data between connected data sources. The design of this scenario involves the following three components:

☛ Five incongruent data sources that use different data formatting methods.

☛ Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003.

☛ Different Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 management agent (MA) types that are used to flow data between a data source and Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003.

The Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 technical reference is an in-depth documentation collection about identity information management concepts. It is not intended as an operations or implementation guide. Instead, it provides information managers, system architects and IT generalists with the necessary background they will need to analyze and develop their own identity management solutions.