Time Machine Supports Testing on Active Directory and Kerberos

Author by Anonymous

SANTA CLARA, CA March 8, 2004--SolutionSoft Systems Inc, a leading provider of Intelligent Data Optimization (IDO) solutions today announced new enhancements to it’s historically successful virtual date & time software tool, Time Machine™. This latest, patent-pending offering provides a solution for customers running either Microsoft’s Active Directory or the open source Kerberos network authentication protocol system to perform crucial date-testing on their mission-critical applications.



Time Machine allows applications in either Windows or UNIX environments to receive and modify at will a simulated date and time of future, past or present time without affecting other applications that are running on the system. This date morphing ability provides organizations the ability to concurrently run separate instances of their software products in virtual time slices on the same hardware with their production applications thereby reducing overall costs.



In a network environment where secure logins are used, such as with Microsoft's Active Directory, users login in with a time-based ticketing system through Kerberos. One of the procedures employed by the Kerberos process to maintain network security is the hard requirement that any machine that participates in the network must have it's system clock synchronized to be no more than five minutes different than the Domain Controller's time. This clock synchronization is necessary to prevent an attacker from using an old authenticator to masquerade as a valid user. The exclusion feature in Time Machine overcomes this issue by allowing the Kerberos login's dynamically linked libraries and executables to run under the valid system time so that all access tokens are requested with the correct time. This process combined with Time Machine's file date-stamping using real-time variables ensures that all backups function correctly, file replication services run without disruption and all machines running Time Machine can freely participate in the secure network.



“When we first offered Time Machine the threat of the Y2K bug was looming across the IT landscape. With this tool our customers were able to identify, fix and Y2K certify their applications in a fraction of the time that would have been required had this product not been available”, said Michael Morrison, Director of Marketing at Solution-Soft. “Since then sales of Time Machine have continued to grow with it’s use in correcting time-zone issues for global companies and lately even more so with our ability to provide a workaround to the draconian time skew restrictions inherent to a Kerberos or Active Directory environment. Essentially when an enterprise runs these highly secure environments it effectively locks-out any machine with a clock setting that differs from the network master clock by more than 15 minutes. Without Time Machine there is no effective way to perform any tests to ensure that a company’s software will function correctly at future dates.”



ASPs and corporate data centers that support users across multiple time zones can also benefit from this versatile software package. Rather than implementing the typical approach, one server per time zone, Time Machine provides a cost-effective, single-server solution. Easy to implement, a single copy of Time Machine installed on a server supports unlimited time zones. With Time Machine, servers can now provide remote clients/users with "local time" as required for legal, accounting, and other sensitive and/or critical time and date applications.



Availability

Time Machine is available for MPE, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and Windows Server platforms.

Solution-Soft invites you to test Time Machine today. Free evaluations are available through our sales group.



About Solution-Soft

Solution-Soft is the leading provider of Intelligent Data Optimization (IDO) solutions, which address the urgent need for automated management of data in complex networking environments. IDO solutions facilitate automated data selection, movement and redirection that optimize high availability, storage scalability and system performance. The company has developed robust data and information life-cycle management software solutions for corporate data centers and storage system vendors. Solution-Soft boasts more than 1,500 customers, including 3M, AT&T, Boeing, Ford, French Telecom, Hewlett Packard, Merck and UMC. Solution-Soft’s market presence is bolstered by partnerships with Citrix Systems (NASDAQ:CTXS), FalconStor. (Nasdaq:FALC), Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT) and Sun Microsystems NASDAQ:SUNW).



Founded in 1993, Solution-Soft is privately held and based in Santa Clara, Calif. For more information, visit www.solution-soft.com or call +1.408.346.1415.