May 2009 Google announced Google Apps Directory Sync and we thought we shoudl take it for a spin.

Our Google environment is small (5 users) but our LDAP has more than 10k entries. We were concerned that we might wipe out users in Google or in LDAP.

We were on a Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit system when we decided to test the product. Installation we straight forward and uneventful.

The primary configuration is a gui for Google Apps Directory Sync is the configuration manager.

Simulation#

A cool thing in the configuration manager is the simulate. Allows you to see what is going to happen. Good logging is also provided. When we first tried it, we ran into this in the logs:

Analyzed users:
	5 local
	5 remote

Proposed changes:
	Delete: 0
	Modify: 2
	Create: 0

Modify (all proposed changes) - 2 total users affected
Modify user 1: "jim"
	Change given name to "James"

Modify user 2: "scott"
	Change given name to "Aaron"

We had set the givenname to map to givenname. We modified a the users in LDAP and changed the mapping of givenname to preferredName and then all was well. THe log then looked like:

Analyzed users:
	5 local
	5 remote

Proposed changes:
	Delete: 0
	Modify: 0
	Create: 0

The Sync is performed as a command line, with typically like:

sync-cmd -a -c C:\mydata\jim\vendors\google\googleSyncConfig.xml

The function can also be scheduled with the Windows Scheduler or cron.

Documentation#

A bit sparse is a mild way to put it.

Took me several minutes to understand that the sync was not done through the GUI.

The Docs AFAIK, are really at postini's Site.

More Information#

There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:

• LDAP