Password Management Technology
(1) P-Synch has been deployed by very large corporations. Some anecdotal examples of large scalability include:
- Organizations with over 250,000 P-Synch users managing passwords on a single P-Synch instance, load balanced between just two servers.
- Users distributed over six continents.
- A single P-Synch instance, running on a single server, managing passwords on over 500 password systems.
- A customer who deployed 20 P-Synch servers, with real-time data replication between them, to allow users to access the system even in the face of network outages.
The P-Synch architectural features that support scalability include:
- The ability to install multiple instances per server.
- The ability of instances to span multiple servers, where each server in a group is functionally identical; supporting the same users, systems and features.
- A built-in, high-performance identity cache, which includes
server-to-server data replication in real time.
This engine has been benchmarked at millions of record updates per second on Windows/Intel servers. The database uses standard, open-format files (xBase/DBF) to ensure compatibility with existing reporting and analytical tools.
- Built-in services to monitor server health and dynamically update DNS records; for example to remove a malfunctioning server from load balancing rotation.
In addition, P-Synch incorporates many features that, while not directly performance-related, are required by large organizations:
- The ability to operate across firewalls: between the user and P-Synch, as well as between P-Synch and managed systems.
- Inclusion of a proxy service, which allows a P-Synch server in one location to manage passwords elsewhere, across slow and/or insecure WANs.
- Support for multiple user interfaces and UI languages per server instance.
- Auto-discovery of user IDs on managed systems, to eliminate ongoing manual administration and to minimize initial setup effort.
- The ability to support self-service password reset for users who forgot their initial NOS login password without having to deploy desktop software (secure kiosk account).
- Support for 21 user interface languages.