Wednesday, January 30, 2013

BHold's New Connector in SP1

As I mentioned in my last post, Microsoft announced the release of FIM R2 SP1 and with that BHold's new bits too.  Something that was sorely lacking with the BHold solution was a dedicated connector between BHold Core and FIM Sync.  This latest release offers the first look at this new connector.

If you go to Microsoft's TechNet Site here to can try it yourself.  I did this last week and found a few issues with the instructions.

The biggest problem deals with the provisioning of OU containers in BHold. When you finish the lab all the OU containers stay under the root.  This is due to not having the reference of the parent containers correct.  The lab uses a SQL database as a source of the OU containers.  But the premise of using a string value of the parent attribute is incorrect, instead is should be a reference value.   I'm don't give out all the details, but most of you can figure it out from here.

Once you fix that AND make sure you also bring over the root container so that the references work all the way up, then it should be smooth sailing.   If you need any help just email me.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

FIM 2010 R2 SP1 has been released!

I heard this at the IdM Summit in Redmond put on by Oxford Computer Group - just got back yesterday.  Nice summit by the way, the usual suspects were there as well as some new faces.
Anyways, it was announced that SP1 bits have been released, and with that the SP1 bits for BHold too.  Very cool, one of the biggest steps forward with the BHold product is the replacement of the FIM Management Agent for BHold.  BHold now takes full advantage of the ECMA2 connector technology in FIM 2010 R2 and with that replaces the BFPC and BFSS services also. As the summit was winding down, I sat down and spent some time with Rob de Jong, Senior PM at Microsoft for BHold, understanding SP1 - but do keep in mind this is a Service Pack - lots of fixes.  The sync engine got a tune up also increasing its sync speed by another 20% 
To get the latest bits you need to have an MSDN or select license, and the documentation won't be out for some time after that... like a few weeks.

One last thing: would like to send a special thank you to Matt Flynn for driving around yesterday.  Matt, I owe you at least the parking fee, if not some beers!