EMU Complements Novell Identity Management Deployment at Metropolitan Community College
Metropolitan Community College has used Novell Identity Manager since 2003 to provision and synchronize their 150,000 user accounts. But they still find that Omni's bulk user account management tool (EMU) comes in handy for doing mass updates and clean-up work on their systems.
Overview
With a tradition of excellence dating back to 1915, Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, Missouri, has long provided quality education and technology services to its faculty and students. Today, MCC uses Novell Identity Manager, ZENworks, PeopleSoft, File System Factory and EMU from Omni to provision and manage over 150,000 student and faculty eDirectory, GroupWise and NetMail accounts.
The Challenge
All education environments and large enterprises struggle with the challenge of creating and managing large numbers of user accounts on an on-going basis. Many companies have created internal tools, batch files and other processes to bulk create user accounts.
"We originally bought EMU in June 2003 as the best solution available to provision and bulk manage our student accounts," said Mr. Wesley Wingfield, Director of Network and User Services for Metropolitan Community College. "Soon thereafter, we deployed a fully integrated Novell Identity Management solution that provisions accounts based on our student registration system that runs on PeopleSoft. Student accounts are automatically created by Novell Identity Manager and File System Factory manages student home directories. And even though we no longer use EMU to create accounts, we still use it from time to time to carry out bulk changes and user account fixes."
"For example, we recently needed to locate and delete orphan directories for students who had registered in the past but have not been on campus for several semesters," added Jim Beachner, Senior Network Engineer for MCC. "Occasionally, student home directories remain in our file system even though File System Factory thinks these accounts are gone. Essentially, the link between eDirectory and File System Factory gets broken. Using EMU's 'Orphaned Home Directory' report, it was quick and easy to identify and bulk delete these orphaned directories. EMU's 'all-in-one' user management functions deliver high value when you need to delete or modify large numbers of accounts."
"Another good example of where EMU really proved its value was when the student account naming strategy was changed," continued Beachner. "We used EMU to rename the student accounts and home directories and re-link home directory trustee assignments. EMU was a life-saver for this project."
The Solution
"Novell Identity Manager and the full suite of Novell products provide our College with the best possible value for our technology and IT personnel investment," said Wingfield. "After deploying Novell Identity Manager as our primary account provisioning tool, we thought EMU would no longer be required. As it turns out, we have continued to renew our EMU support each year, because invariably we need EMU for some critical clean-up and repair tasks on our large system."
The Results
"EMU is an ideal user provisioning tool for smaller Novell networks where the cost associated with implementing a full Novell IDM implementation may not be worthwhile," said Wingfield. "At MCC, where we have over 150,000 accounts to manage, EMU serves as an excellent complement to Novell Identity Manager. We find that when nothing else works, nine out of ten times EMU will do the job," added Beachner.