AAF Services Authorisation Workshops

Over the last 2 months, AAF Services Authorisation Workshops have been held in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. The workshops were targeted particularly towards technical staff bringing services into the Federation either as part of an AAF Mini-grant project or as an independent project.

The aims of the workshops were to:

• decide on a common way forward with respect to Service Authorisation by determining policy and the tools to support policy decisions; and
• give participants an opportunity to share experiences, enabling future projects with the experiences and knowledge already gained from these projects.

The AAF Technical Program Manager, Terry Smith, facilitated the workshops with Bradley Beddoes (Accelerated Technical Development) and input from our State-based AAF staff -Damien Mannix and Stuart Allen.

The workshops provided information and useful discussion on the way forward by identifying common problems through Use Cases and providing participants with the complete picture of access control which will assist them to develop future strategies, policy, tools etc.

Outcomes and further information discussed at the workshops is available on the AAF Wiki on the AAF Services Authorisation Workshop space.

Federation Registry Deployed

Over the past 12 months the AAF technical team has been hard at work scoping, designing and implementing a new platform to make management of the federation easier and more accessible for all of our participants.

The result of this is the Federation Registry, which has been deployed to the AAF test federation and is scheduled to be deployed to the AAF production federation in late November.

In the initial release, participants are able to register and fully manage identity providers and service providers through a flexible, easy to use web-based environment. Federation Registry also provides tools to assist the AAF in monitoring participant compliance to our rules, automation of complex attribute release configuration, complete support for SAML 2 metadata distribution and a very flexible workflow engine. Of course we look forward to continuing extending the functionality provided by Federation Registry into the future.

Try Federation Registry now by visiting: https://manager.test.aaf.edu.au/federationregistry/.

The AAF continues to grow

Membership of the AAF continues to grow with 27 of 39 Australian universities currently Members. In all, we have 47 Participants (39 Members and 8 Affiliates), which includes a number of prestigious research organisations and three New Zealand universities and vendors. A number of institutions have signaled their intention to join the AAF before the end of the year.

Subscription Fees. Join the AAF before 31 December 2010 and you save paying the one-time joining fee of $3,500. From 1 January 2011, the AAF will move to a self funding subscription model. Fees for AAF Members and Affiliates are available from the Subscription Fees page.

CloudStor has been federated

CloudStor, AARNet’s large file transfer platform, has been federated with the Australian Access Federation. This means that CloudStor can now make use of your home institute’s native login systems. You or your colleagues no longer need to apply for a beta account.

The federated version of CloudStor lives at a new address: https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/filesender/. Click the login button, find your institute in the drop-down list, and away you go.

It may be that your institute isn’t a Participant of the AAF yet. You can check for yourself here: http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/join/member-institutes/.

If you hold a CloudStor beta account, but your institute isn’t an AAF Participant (yet), take heart! The FEIDE OpenID login method will be retained for a six month grace period. Please use that time wisely: convince your institute to join the AAF to access a growing number of AAF-enabled services.

For more information: http://www.aarnet.edu.au/Projects/2010/09/22/AARNet-Cloudstor.aspx.

Guido Aben, Director eResearch, AARNet

AAF Executive Committee Elected at AGM

At the AAF Annual General Meeting held last month, the following Members were elected to the Executive Committee:

The AGM also approved some changes to the AAF Constitution and the AAF Rules for Participants. To view these documents, go to http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/about/ and http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/join/ respectively.

Go to the AAF Wiki to have your say

Have you had a chance to visit the AAF Wiki site? The AAF Wiki is a valuable information resource and has been designed to provide a collaborative space for all members of the AAF community. The Wiki is publicly accessible; however, you can also login with your AAF Login if you wish to leave a comment.

Welcome to the AAF Newsletter for November 2010.

For further information about the AAF, go to www.aaf.edu.au or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.