OpenDS Aphelion replacement in 9.1 m030

[WesTucker]

9.1 m030 Windchill replaces Aphelion with "Windchill Directory Server"
which "is powered by OpenDS technology" (

[mark-2.turner]

Very interested in this topic as well, since it was talked up at the conference.

[atwood]

WindchillDS will still be required as a separate ldap server for Windchillwhen you source your users/passwords from a corporate ldap. All we're doing is replacing Aphelion with another ldap server. There are several reasons for this, one of the most important being that we will be able togive better support by doingan in-house development branch on the open-source project (OpenDS).

The transition shouldn't be too painful. Please see the chapter on migrating at http://www.ptc.com/view?im_dbkey=98719. This isn't like having to blow away and rebuild all your search indexes during the Retrievalware to Fast transition. Export and import of the ldap data is usually pretty quick.

Any other specific questions? The administration interfaceitselfis pretty straightforward.

In Reply to Wes Tucker:

9.1 m030 Windchill replaces Aphelion with "Windchill Directory Server"
which "is powered by OpenDS technology" (https://www.opends.org/1.2).

Does anyone have any feedback on this change?

I can see how a newer implementation of LDAP could have some good
performance benefits etc, since Aphelion seemed to be getting a little
long in the tooth. Aphelion was always required even if you used a
corporate LDAP for authentication so this change seems fairly
significant from a system administration viewpoint even if it should be
invisible to my Windchill users.

-=wes

[ddemay]

Related discussion...

The main reason Aphelion is even needed at all is because its schema supports entries that other directory servers do not without further configuration. Provided an LDIF export can be successfully and correctly imported into another ldap, one could modify their corporate ldap schema or use something else besides OpenDS if they wanted to run Windchill on a system that Aphelion is not supported on but has a compatible JRE.

One thing I also noticed is that 9.1 is relying less on the directory server entries i.e. container teams and moving more toward database.

David DeMay

[atwood]

That’s correct, as of 9.0 the container team info was moved from the ldap to the database, making the ldap info much more static and easier to synchronize to the database.



Its true that you might be able to customize another ldap engine to run as the Windchill Infoengine configuration repository, but you wouldn’t be supported by Tech Support using that configuration.



Regards,

Tim

[wneuman]

Wes - It should be an improvement for customers over Aphelion in the
areas of backup/recovery (faster LDIF handling) and platform support
(all Windchill supported platforms are supported by the directory
server!). The rest should be about the same. The MOR documentation
covers what is required to do the directory upgrade - we have done
everything we could do make the upgrade as easy as possible. Similar to
what you've asked, I would be interested in feedback as people perform
the upgrade.



Best Regards,

Bill Neuman

Director, Windchill Infrastructure and Integrations

[jkent]

I just performed the upgrade today on a test server. The upgrade guide
does an excellent job of walking you through the process. Believe it or
not I didn't even have to open a support call on this one. Smooth as
silk!



Bill, Can you schedule a backup through the DS Control Panel?

[wneuman]

You can initiate a backup through the DS control panel. If you want to
schedule a backup, you can use the command line tools. Here's a pointer
to the OpenDS documentation on scheduling.