Release of UCS 4.2 planned for April 2017

After having released a new version of UCS with new features each November for the last few years, we have decided this year to reschedule the release of UCS 4.2 for April 2017.

There are a number of reasons for this move, one of the primary ones being the migration of apps from the App Center to the use of the container technology Docker. This results in increased security during operation and the possibility of running apps with different system requirements on one and the same system. In addition, this will also allow us to render the updating of UCS itself and the individual apps more independent of each other, thus significantly reducing the efforts required on the part of app developers and users in the case of new releases.

UCC 3.0 Now Verified as Citrix Ready

A new major version of Univention Corporate Client (UCC), Version 3.0, was released in mid-August. Due to a problem with Citrix Receiver, however, Citrix was not fully supported in that version. Thanks to an update, it has now proved possible to resolve the issue, and complete Citrix support with UCS is now guaranteed once again.

The last release brought with it a changeover of the operating system basis from UCC 3.0 to Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Support (LTS). The Ubuntu substructure allows users of UCC to benefit both from the large, continuously updated software selection and from the broad hardware support offered by Ubuntu’s use of the latest Linux kernel versions.

Integrate Cloud Service Google Apps for Work in UCS

Logo Google Apps for Work Connector
Browser-supported Office solutions such as Office 365 or Google Apps for Work (now G Suite) make mobile working much easier and reduce administrative efforts, because they are not anymore installed on the computer but run in the cloud. Administrators don’t need to maintain license lists anymore, nor do regular software updates, and incompatibility issues are a thing of the past.

With the connectors “Google App for Work Connector” and „Office 365 Connector“ we developed two apps that help you facilitate administrative tasks as well as make user access safer and easier. Administrators thus manage all users access centrally via UCS while the users themselves access the cloud services from within their working environment with their usual passwords.

In this short video we will show you how you can easily download and integrate the „Google App for Work Connector“ from the Univention App Center and integrate it in your UCS environment.

How to Integrate with LDAP: “Generic LDAP Connection”

LDAP

In the blog article series “How to integrate with LDAP”, we introduce a whole range of different options and possibilities for how the LDAP provided by UCS can be expanded or used in cooperation with other services.

In the first section of this article, “Typical Configuration Options”, I will be using an example to demonstrate the sort of information typically required to perform user authentication against the UCS LDAP. I will be taking you through the necessary configuration steps using the project management system Redmine as an example, as this requests all the typical information.

In the second section, “Types of Search Users”, I will go into more detail on the possibilities available to you if it is not possible to search through the UCS LDAP anonymously.

If you are not all that familiar with the topic of LDAP yet, I would recommend you read our blog article: Brief Introduction: What’s Behind the Terms LDAP and OpenLDAP? first of all.

How can OpenLDAP with UCS be scaled to over 30 million objects?

Serverschränke mit Zahnrädern im Vordergrund

The majority of the environments in which UCS is employed include anywhere from a couple of dozen users up to several thousand – sizes which can be directly implemented with the standard configuration of UCS. In the systems operated by the education authorities we see a leap to between 10,000 and 100,000 users – in this case, the UCS@school concepts allow functioning scaling.

Even including groups, hosts, and other LDAP infrastructure objects in the calculations, these environments rarely exceed 200,000 objects. But what happens when an environment with more than 30,000,000 objects needs to be administrated in LDAP?

UCC 3.0 released: Switch from Kubuntu to Ubuntu

UCC Univention Corporate Client Logo

This week we have published version 3.0 of Univention Corporate Client (UCC) our desktop solution for the operation and administration of PCs, notebooks and thin clients. An essential change in comparison to previous releases is the change of the technical basis from Kubuntu to Ubuntu. Our reason for this switch was that Ubuntu offers longer support terms (5 years) for the Long Term Support (LTS) Versions. Kubuntu 16.04 LTS only offers support for 3 years. Customers thus profit from a longterm support for UCC. With this switch the desktop environment was also changed from KDE to Unity. Unity was especially developed for Ubuntu by Canonical. To achieve a better overview of all UCC images installed in one environment, all actually installed client images will be reported to Univention Corporate Server (UCS) from now on. As UCS is the central identity management system for UCC, these images will then be displayed for easy search in UCS.

UCS 4.1-3: Third Point Release published

The third point release of Univention Corporate Server 4.1 – UCS 4.1-3 – is now available to download. It includes various usability improvements, important security updates and all errata updates that have been published in the last three months. One of the main focuses of this release is on the further extension of the App Center such as offering software vendors the possibility to provide Docker-based apps.

New Release of UCS@school Simplifies the Central Management of User Accounts

Logo UCS@School
With the release of UCS@school 4.1 R2, we have equipped our IT solution for schools with two new additional functions for the central management of digital identities and authorizations. From now on, UCS@school allows teaching staff and pupils to use their accounts at various schools. And stored school administration data can now be automatically imported into the identity management system of UCS. These new functions significantly reduce the maintenance efforts of managing the identities and authorizations of pupils and teaching staff. With these two new features we increased UCS@school’s standing as a solution for creative, centralized, and cost effective IT management of applications and digital identities in schools.

Manage Local System Configuration in UCS with UCR

Univention Corporate Server Logo

UCR is the central tool for the management of the local system configuration of a UCS-based system. It releases you from the manual editing of sensitive configuration files.

In this video tutorial we explain how you can easily administrate your local system configuration in Univention Corporate Server via Univention Configuration Registry (UCR).