Isode's Directory products include servers and management tools. On this page you'll find information about our products for Directory Server and System Management. Tools for Directory Data Management are also available.

M-Vault Console

M-Vault Console (MVC) is used for the creation, management and systems' administration of large-scale directory services. M-Vault Console's capabilities include:

  • Creating, deleting, starting, stopping DSAs (and shadow DSAs).
  • Set-up and management of failover clusters.
  • Setup of peer servers for chaining and replication (shadowing), setting up both ends together where both machines are managed.
  • Configuring authentication requirements, both server/server and client/server.
  • Configuration of directory databases, and naming contexts.
  • Password policy management, including hashing and SCRAM setup.

Directory Setup Wizard

The Directory Setup Wizard, which enables easy configuration of multiple DSAs on a single machine, provides a setup which can be used 'as is' for many deployments. The Wizard creates an initial user, useful groups, and default ACI (Access Control Information). This enables ACI to be handled by role based groups for directory and application management functions.

The Shadow directory setup wizard takes defaults from an existing server and replicates in groups, access control and selected data.

Headless Setup

M-Vault Console provides a clean mechanism for setting up a directory when a GUI can conveniently be run on the server. M-Vault can also be set up headless, which is helpful for some server setups. This is done by running Cobalt web interface to create an M-Vault server. M-Vault Console is then used client/server once the initial setup is created.

Directory Management

MVC's directory management features includes

  • The configuration of SASL and TLS
  • PKI and Strong Authentication setup, including identity creation and interaction with a CA.
  • Password policy management, including hashing and SCRAM setup.
  • Creation and management of shadowing agreements.
  • Creation and management of failover clusters (see the next section).

Failover

MVC can be used to create and manage a failover group of M-Vault servers from multiple locations. M-Vault Console will connect to each of the servers in the failover group, and monitor the status of each server. This will give the operator a view of the status of all of the servers and ability to control failover. Two options to control failover are provided:

  1. Managed. If the master is available M-Vault Console can tell the master to switch to a server. The current master will complete outstanding operations, and then switch all the servers. This will give a clean switch of master to a new server.
  2. Forced. If the master is not available, M-Vault Console can tell all of the remaining servers in the group which of them is the new master, and each server will switch immediately. This model is used in a disaster recovery situation, when the master has failed.

In the screenshot below MVC is shown managing a failover group with the failover group master clearly indicated.