Kamar Active Directory Sync

[Simon Phelon]

Hi, first post, long time lurker.

We have a respectable sized roll here, almost 1000 students and growing.  We use the Kamar Directory Synchronisation Manager to pass user and group details to AD and GADS to then manage our Google Apps.

This has worked reasonably well for the past few years, although the DSM service on our DC server used to crash semi-regularly and need to be restarted.  It has gotten much worse recently and now can not manage a complete sync without crashing.

I have checked the logs which record nothing, I have had our previous server support company check the server, they could find nothing wrong.  The server has been restarted numerous times and as we want some extra functionality out of DSM that it looks like it may not be capable of, I'm now thinking that its time we ditched DSM.

DSM itself has be depreciated, the concept sold to ITed and replaced by ADMS which is a paid-for product.

Are there any other (preferably free) applications that do the same thing?  I'm a bit miffed that the sync has been sold off and then charged for, this feature was one of the main selling points for me when we shifted from Musac.

[Alistair Baird]

ADSM is free to Kamar users, see https://www.kamar.nz/105606.

 This works in place of the old KDSM, but it does change the names of the groups and subjects by prefixing them with Group and Subject respectively which I'd dearly love to change.

On 1 December 2017 at 10:58, Simon Phelon <sup...@wakatipu.school.nz> wrote:

Hi, first post, long time lurker.

We have a respectable sized roll here, almost 1000 students and growing.  We use the Kamar Directory Synchronisation Manager to pass user and group details to AD and GADS to then manage our Google Apps.

This has worked reasonably well for the past few years, although the DSM service on our DC server used to crash semi-regularly and need to be restarted.  It has gotten much worse recently and now can not manage a complete sync without crashing.

I have checked the logs which record nothing, I have had our previous server support company check the server, they could find nothing wrong.  The server has been restarted numerous times and as we want some extra functionality out of DSM that it looks like it may not be capable of, I'm now thinking that its time we ditched DSM.

DSM itself has be depreciated, the concept sold to ITed and replaced by ADMS which is a paid-for product.

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Alistair Baird

IT Manager

St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

m 021 482 937

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

[Simon Wright]

Simon,

I may have a solution for you depending on your needs.

I wrote a powershell script to do all the things that i wanted which originally worked from a csv file, but when Kamar added directory sync i modified it to work with the xml data.

Since then i wrote my own Windows Service thats been running for a couple of years now and works great. I haven't actively worked on it for about a year, just a few tweaks this year.

I just scan the logs each day to make sure everything ran as it should, even picked up a few issues with the output from kamar directory sync when they change things.

Let me know if i can help.

Regards
Simon Wright
ICT Manager

Best for boys through the right learning
2 Arthur Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand p: 03 477 5527 | f: 03 477 5468 | c: 021 773 229 | w: obhs.school.nz

Respect - Whakaute | Courage - Toa | Honour - Hōnore | Perseverance - Manawanui | Excellence - Hiranga

On 1 December 2017 at 11:14, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:

ADSM is free to Kamar users, see https://www.kamar.nz/105606.

 This works in place of the old KDSM, but it does change the names of the groups and subjects by prefixing them with Group and Subject respectively which I'd dearly love to change.

On 1 December 2017 at 10:58, Simon Phelon <sup...@wakatipu.school.nz> wrote:

Hi, first post, long time lurker.

We have a respectable sized roll here, almost 1000 students and growing.  We use the Kamar Directory Synchronisation Manager to pass user and group details to AD and GADS to then manage our Google Apps.

This has worked reasonably well for the past few years, although the DSM service on our DC server used to crash semi-regularly and need to be restarted.  It has gotten much worse recently and now can not manage a complete sync without crashing.

I have checked the logs which record nothing, I have had our previous server support company check the server, they could find nothing wrong.  The server has been restarted numerous times and as we want some extra functionality out of DSM that it looks like it may not be capable of, I'm now thinking that its time we ditched DSM.

DSM itself has be depreciated, the concept sold to ITed and replaced by ADMS which is a paid-for product.

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Alistair Baird

IT Manager

St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

m 021 482 937

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

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[Jake Wills]

I wrote an open source alternative a little while back, which a couple of others have contributed to as well... we are using it at Kāpiti College, and I know a few other schools are using it as well.

Full details here: https://github.com/mathsnz/ADSync

It's free, it works, and if you want to customise it you can as the code is all open source :)

[Sheldon Lendrum]

Simon, I don’t think KDMS was sold to ITed, one of KAMARS Developers left and then another moved to with at ITed.
As that link covers it was never a core KAMAR product.

ITeds service is very good and offers the customisation the original does not. It’s also well supported as you would expect from a paid product. It means that if KAMAR does change field names they will fix and release an update for you.

There other options such as PS script like Simons or we have used Jake Wills PHP code for a number of schools and customised/rewritten that to suit schools exact requirements.
His code is on github if you want to have a play.

I doubt and KAMAR directory sync fields will change now and new fields will not affect what you need.

You have my contact details from when we dealt with the new KAMAR portal if you want any help setting it up.

[Simon Phelon]

Thanks to everyone for their posts, I think I will try the ADSync program on a test OU and see how that goes. Great help, thanks.