There are multiple ways of upgrading an existing driver and its policies. There is no simple method, because there is no merge process in Identity Manager to merge customized policies. When a driver is upgraded, any policy that has the same name as a policy in the new driver is over written. If the policies have been customized, they are overwritten and the customization is lost.
There are many different ways of upgrading to address this issue, but this section discusses two of the upgrade methods. There are pros and cons to each upgrade method.
The pros to this method are:
Any existing policies are not overwritten.
The cons to this method are:
All associations for synchronized objects are lost and must be re-created, expanded, and reloaded.
The amount of time it takes to make the associations again. If you have a policy that depends upon a specific association, that policy does not work.
Complexity of making sure policies and rules are restored correctly.
The impact of this method depends upon how your policies are configured.
The pros are:
If your policies have different names than the policies in the driver configuration file, they are not overwritten.
The associations for the synchronized objects stay the same and do not need to be re-created.
The cons are:
If your policies have the same name as policies in the driver configuration file, they are overwritten.
This is the recommended upgrade option. However, in order for this upgrade method to work, some methodology needs to be in place for creating policies.
You should follow the same procedures when developing policies as when you upgrade the policies.
Existing Novell policies or rules should never be modified.
If you do not use a default policy, disable the policy, but do not delete it.
Create new policies or rules to achieve the desired result for your business needs.
Use a standard naming model for naming the policies in your company.
Name your policies with a prefix of the policy set where the policy is stored. This allows you to know which policy set to attach the policy to.
If you have these methodologies in place, use Section 2.2, Recommended Driver Configuration Upgrade Procedure, to upgrade the driver configuration.