ASAP: The Network

diegumzone — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:00:00 GMT

After the initial success of the original Aspiring Software Architects Program, there was a second series focused on Infrastructure Architecture, especially related to Identity and Group Management, network planning, availability and so on

The program was a complete success so I asked Ramnish Singh (Infrastructure MCA in MS India) for the chance of making all these available for any aspiring architect all over the world (session language is English in all cases). I want to thank Ramnish for this contribution, that I'm confident that will help a lot IT Pros raise the bar, start thinking on computing environments in a different manner and get the necessary background and skills

The remaining ingredients in the Architecture Career prescription is up to you, guys: experience, dedication and passion! Enjoy!

Introduction to Designing an Active Directory Infrastructure
The Architecture Series is intended for those involved in planning, designing, and implementing an enterprise-class infrastructure project, including consultants, system architects, and IT professionals who are responsible for directory services infrastructure development and deployment. The series is aimed at empowering systems integrators and IT professionals with validated architectural guidance for Active Directory.

Designing a Forest and Domain Infrastructure
This session will cover the first major design decisions when creating an Active Directory infrastructure - Active Directory logical structure and the design of forests and domains.

Designing a Site Infrastructure
This session explains how to design a site topology to organize the network in your organization and optimize the exchange of data and directory information.

Designing the Administrative Structure
This session explains how to design administrative structure to delegate authority and simplify administrative overhead and design an organizational unit structure.

Designing for Group Policy
This session describes how to gather and analyze business requirements and other data and then use that data to design a Group Policy structure and integrate the structure into an organizational unit design. It describes the role of Group Policy in the Active Directory infrastructure and factors in choosing particular implementations, such as security, software deployment, and administrative requirements. The session also covers why and how to design a change management structure.

Designing the Physical Network
This session describes how to gather business requirements and other data and then analyze and use that data to design the physical network. It explains how to design a connectivity infrastructure, with considerations for intrasite and intersite connectivity, router placement, connection types, and virtual private networks (VPNs).

Designing a Name Resolution Strategy
This session describes the relationship between Active Directory and DNS domain names, Windows Internet Name Service (WINS), and other name-resolution strategies.

Designing the Network Access Infrastructure
This session describes how to design a network access infrastructure by gathering relevant data, and then analyzing and using that data to design for network access security, remote access, and wireless access. The module includes strategies for authentication, administration, access monitoring, interoperability, and user education.

Designing for Federation
This session describes how to design Active Directory to support Federation. Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), a next-generation information security infrastructure designed to help IT professionals extend internal applications to external users.

Notes from Field and Contest Case Study
This session will showcase the best practices followed for Active Directory Architecture and will have panel of experts discuss their Enterprise (Active Directory) Architecture experiences.

Just Released: Architecture Journal 16 on Identity and Access

diegumzone — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Two years ago, when an article of mine about evolving architectures was published in an independent IT magazine, a colleague said to me, “You should write for The Architecture Journal.” I couldn’t have predicted that I would now find myself writing for this magazine as its editor. I want to thank Simon Guest for this opportunity and these big shoes to fill; during his tenure, readership has more than doubled, increasing from 30,000 to 62,000+.

In this issue, we invite you to think about the identity architecture in your organization. Identity management today is evolving from the single, isolated scenario to a federated one, in ways that might surprise you.

We begin this sixteenth journey with Fernando Gebara Filho’s introduction to identity concepts and strategies, how they have evolved and the road ahead. Next, Jesus Rodriguez and Joe Klug examine an assortment of strategies for making identity a first-class citizen in the portfolio of federated applications. Gerrit van der Geest and Carmen de Ruijter Korver consider the challenge of establishing an application-level trust environment, as user identities, in a service-oriented world, must flow from a service consumer to a provider.

For this issue’s profile, we caught up with Kim Cameron, author of “The Laws of Identity,” whose ideas on federated identities are shaping the next generation of Microsoft identity technologies. (A funny thing happened the day I visited Kim for this interview: I forgot my ID badge, so I needed Kim to “certify” my identity to the lobby.)

Resuming our journey, Mario Szpuszta describes how the Austrian healthcare system turned an administrative provisioning crisis into a clear opportunity for creating an open identity federation. Then Vittorio Bertocci explains how architectural patterns allow us to build claim-aware solutions, so that when the cloud arrives to companies, identity management won’t necessarily look cloudy.

Finally, Mike Morley and Barry Lawrence reveal how they synchronized identities on multiple systems and legacy applications from a single administrative console through a consolidating framework.

Dear reader, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to the issue, and hope that you’ll identify with the articles within. Enjoy!

Bonus article:

David Chou offers a comprehensive view of strong user authentication by examining its concepts, implementation approaches, and challenges and additional concerns

DiegumZone. Who Wanna Be An Architect? : Identity and Access

ASAP: The Network

Just Released: Architecture Journal 16 on Identity and Access