Best Practices: LDAP/Active Directory and Account Provisioning

[cgabbadon]

Hi all,

 

I am just wondering seeing the different ways schools have their directory servers setup. What exactly does your directory schema look like and how are the groups and organizational units setup for your different schools.

 

1. How do you organize members in different schools?
   
2. What groups do you have setup for students, teachers, parents, administrators, etc.?
   
3. How do you manage large amounts of student accounts moving from one school or grade to another? Also, how do you handle student accounts who have graduated?
   
4. What LDAP system do you use (Microsoft Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, OpenLDAP, etc.)?
   
5. Anything else interesting you do that works well?
   

 

If you have some good experience and could answer one or more of the questions, that would be greatly appreciated. It would be helpful to me, and I'm sure others would find it useful. Thanks much!

Edited May 7, 2008 by cgabbadon

[FN-GM]

1. Each group has there own OU. Administrators have there own OU Staff then in that its split up into support, teaching etc.

 

2. Each group of users have there own group such as year of 2004 students and teaching staff.

 

3. If they move school they will just get a new account in the new school. After students leave the accounts are disabled then in September they are deleted. We name each group after the year they started so there will be no change at each new academic year.

 

4. Microsoft Windows Active Directory on Windows Server 2003

 

We also filter staff and students differently students are locked down tight staff have a little more freedom. Some schools have two networks a curriculum and admin network. We have a flat network here and are in a multiple domain forest. That basically means lots of school connected together, students and staff can login other schools if they need to.

[cgabbadon]

1. Each group has there own OU. Administrators have there own OU Staff then in that its split up into support, teaching etc.

 

2. Each group of users have there own group such as year of 2004 students and teaching staff.

 

3. If they move school they will just get a new account in the new school. After students leave the accounts are disabled then in September they are deleted. We name each group after the year they started so there will be no change at each new academic year.

 

4. Microsoft Windows Active Directory on Windows Server 2003

 

We also filter staff and students differently students are locked down tight staff have a little more freedom. Some schools have two networks a curriculum and admin network. We have a flat network here and are in a multiple domain forest. That basically means lots of school connected together, students and staff can login other schools if they need to.

 

Thanks much - I appreciate your feedback!

[maniac]

Hi all,

 

I am just wondering seeing the different ways schools have their directory servers setup. What exactly does your directory schema look like and how are the groups and organizational units setup for your different schools.

 

1. How do you organize members in different schools?
   
2. What groups do you have setup for students, teachers, parents, administrators, etc.?
   
3. How do you manage large amounts of student accounts moving from one school or grade to another? Also, how do you handle student accounts who have graduated?
   
4. What LDAP system do you use (Microsoft Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, OpenLDAP, etc.)?
   
5. Anything else interesting you do that works well?
   

 

If you have some good experience and could answer one or more of the questions, that would be greatly appreciated. It would be helpful to me, and I'm sure others would find it useful. Thanks much!

 

1. Devided firstly by students and staff, the students are then split by year group defined by year of entry so we don't have to change it every year, and the staff by administrators, teachers and support staff. Each OU has it's own polices etc. applied to it.

 

2. Loads of different groups defined within our active directory that allows/disallow access to different resources on our network. I have lots of VBS scripts that read this group information at logon and act on it accordingly setting things like Internet Explorer Homepage, drives that are mapped, printer mappings etc. I think we have over 100 different groups for various things, mainly e-mail distribution lists.

 

3. Students who have left get their account disabled and moved to an OU labelled Leavers. Same for staff. Once a year we purge these accounts and associated home areas, profiles etc. after taking a comprehensive backup just in case.

 

4. Our LDAP is microsoft active directory on server 2003.

 

5. I have some PHP scripts I've written which compare our student records in CMIS (our MIS system) to our active directory database, and it sends me an e-mail report notifying me of students in CMIS who don't have a network account, and students with a network account who no longer exist in CMIS so I can make sure every student in the school has a network account, and all the leavers get disabled ASAP. I could get it to make the adjustments automatically, but I like to do it manually so I know what's going on. This task is made easier by the fact we have Moodle which uses LDAP as it's auththentication, so my script uses the account information from moodle for the comparison purposes.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike.

Edited May 7, 2008 by maniac

[hamish_2000]

Hi All,

 

I'm still hoping to get a response for this question: 3.How do you manage large amounts of student accounts moving from one school or grade to another?

 

It is end of the year and we have to do it before christmas. Network admin guy asked me to find out. Any idea or suggestion would help. Thanks, Hamish

[SpuffMonkey]

5. I have some PHP scripts I've written which compare our student records in CMIS (our MIS system) to our active directory database, and it sends me an e-mail report notifying me of students in CMIS who don't have a network account, and students with a network account who no longer exist in CMIS so I can make sure every student in the school has a network account, and all the leavers get disabled ASAP. I could get it to make the adjustments automatically, but I like to do it manually so I know what's going on. This task is made easier by the fact we have Moodle which uses LDAP as it's auththentication, so my script uses the account information from moodle for the comparison purposes.

Mike.

 

Hi Mike

 

I'd be interested in seeing those scripts if you are willing to share - cheers