I’ve been working with VAS for quite a while, and have gone through all the versions since 2.6, and this has to be the biggest thing I’ve seen in over 4 years of working with the prodct. And the big thing is not VAS (or QAS, as its now known) itself, but a free add-on call Identity Manager for Unix (IMU). You can download your copy from here.
And the cool thing is that you can use the product without buying VAS. What is it? Its a free, web-based console for managing unix, linux and mac users & groups. Obviously, if you buy VAS, you get a lot more functionality, but just the core functionality alone makes it a cool download. If you have more than 2 unix boxes, this makes life a lot easier. You can now assess all your *nix boxes, get a list of all your users and groups, and make changes right there, in a browser window.
And how do I know its cool? Because I was on-site with a customer that had been evaluating VAS 3.5 for about a month, and they confirmed it. They were going to have me go through and show them all the commands, tips & tricks and refresh them on all the things I’d shown them the month before. Well, after installing IMU, and running through how it worked, they simply replied with “we got everything we need. You answered all the questions we had with this console, and we feel pretty good that we can drive everything through this instead of the command line.” And that was the goal . . . make unix account management easy to drive from a single point, with no need to script or even log onto multiple boxes. Everything is dead easy . . . and did I mention its free?!?!?
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