Is there a way to create non-LDAP groups in Crowd but for grouping LDAP users?

[N B]

Due to customer requirements, we need groups created in Crowd that are outside of Active Directory. Nevertheless, we want to use these Crowd-only groups to be able to group Active Directory users. Is there a way?

The reasoning is to be able to assign group permissions only in Crowd, without having to ask the IT dept. to create new LDAP groups, yet still have a single source of users via the central Active Directory.

Today I was unable to figure out a way, because it would only allow me to add LDAP users to LDAP groups, or add Crowd users to Crowd groups, but I could find no way to add LDAP users to Crowd groups.

This is a very important use case for our large German customer and the main reason why the customer wanted to use Crowd...

[Bruno Vincent · Accepted solution]

Hi @N B

Yes there is!

Add an LDAP Directory connector in Crowd (of type Active Directory) and select the 'Manage Groups Locally' setting on the Connector tab.

Please follow Atlassian's documentation for more details: https://confluence.atlassian.com/crowd/configuring-an-ldap-directory-connector-18579550.html

[N B]

Thanks Bruno, looks promising. Only issue so far is that "synchronise to local cache" option fails with Java out of memory error, due to the fact the client is somewhat large and has 5000 to 10000 LDAP entries.

Is it possible to run this option 'Manage Groups Locally' without having to sychronise the LDAP DB to the local Crowd cache?

[Bruno Vincent]

Hi @N B

As stated in the documentation, the 'Manage Groups Locally' option is only available if the cache is enabled.

However, OutOfMemory issues in Crowd can usually be solved by increasing the value of the '-Xmx' Java option in apache-tomcat/bin/setenv.sh (or setenv.bat on Windows).

You might want to take a look at the following KB page: https://confluence.atlassian.com/crowdkb/outofmemory-errors-in-crowd-224396874.html

[Craig Castle-Mead]

Unsure if this is possible given your requirements, but you could look to filter down the groups using an ldap filter to either no groups coming from AD, or a subset of groups from AD, but still get all users. This would speed up the sync and then allow you to enable cache on the directory, and then manage the groups you want in Crowd but add the AD users to your Crowd groups.

if there is no way to restrict the AD groups coming in, adjust the xms/xmx as already suggested (probably worth reviewing this anyway)

CCM

[Marcin Kempa]

Hi @N B,

You may also find this Crowd webinar interesting, which describes different deployment scenarios with Crowd as well as other topics like license optimization, SSO, High availability which you may find useful.

Best Regards,

Marcin Kempa