Active Directory Cookbook, 3rd Edition

Chapter 21. Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager

21.0. Introduction

Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) 2007 is a suite of application servers that includes the successor to the Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003. The ILM 2007 product set also contains a separate but complementary server product called Certificate Lifecycle Manager (CLM), which is used to provide self-service for environments with a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that need to provide self-service and policy-based certificate management. While CLM is typically thought of as a solution for smart card enrollment and lifecycle management, it excels at providing policy management for any certificate type; however, the CLM components of the ILM 2007 suite are not covered in this chapter. In the light of the rename, the MIIS community has struggled to differentiate between what was the MIIS synchronization engine from the ILM suite itself, not wishing to drag CLM into what has typically been an MIIS conversation. In cases where differentiation is important, the two server products are usually referred to as the “synch engine” and CLM; however, for the purposes of simplification within this chapter, the term ILM is used to only refer to the synch engine from this point forward.

ILM is a robust .NET application platform built on Microsoft’s highly successful database platform—SQL Server. ILM provides services for the synchronization and reconciliation of identity data, and in some cases passwords, between ...