Registration
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Entitlements
What are bwIDM and Entitlements?
Every member of a higher education institution in Baden-Württemberg (university, college, PH, HAW, etc.) has a personal account for accessing the IT services provided by their institution. If the institution participates in the federated identity management system bwIDM, its members can also apply for additional IT services offered by other participating institutions.
To allow external IT services to identify users, certain personal data is transmitted during registration and/or use of the service. Federated identity management ensures, through a model of mutual trust, that the external service can verify the user’s affiliation with their institution — confirming that the account is valid and the user is officially recognized. Within the bwIDM Federation, participating institutions have agreed on a minimum set of personal data that is transmitted to external IT services. This includes standard attributes such as eduPersonPrincipalName, mail, and givenName.
Some services, however, require additional information — for example, whether a user’s home institution is authorized to access a particular external service. This is handled through the assignment of special attributes, such as eduPersonEntitlement, to the user's account.
Which entitlements are required to use bwCloud-OS?
To access and use bwCloud-OS, you need a valid bwCloud-OS entitlement. A detailed overview of the current entitlement regulations can be found here.
Note: The specific bwCloud(-OS) entitlements are currently under review and may be subject to change.
How can I find out which entitlements my account contains?
To view information about bwIDM services linked to your account, log in to the "RegApp".
For detailed information on the entitlements associated with your account (including those for services not yet registered), navigate to:
- Index → Personal Data → Shibboleth
In the Value column, you should see entries such as bwCloud-Basic or bwCloud-Extended. If such an entry containing bwCloud exists, you are entitled to register and use bwCloud-OS. Which specific entitlement you have is determined by your home institution and cannot be changed by you or the bwCloud-OS team.
What should I do if my account has no bwCloud-OS entitlement assigned?
The assignment of entitlements is exclusively managed by your home institution. The bwCloud-OS team does not have the authority to add or remove entitlements on user accounts.
If your account lacks the necessary entitlement, please contact your institution’s central IT service department (such as the computer center, IT service center, or service desk) and request that the appropriate bwCloud-OS entitlement be assigned to your account.
Regions
What does "region" mean in bwCloud-OS?
bwCloud-OS currently consists of four different operating sites = regions, which can be selected and administered via a common interface (dashboard). Each of the four operating sites acts as an independent region. This means: running instances in the Mannheim region receive an IP address according to the configuration of the Mannheim region. The IP address is specific to Mannheim and cannot move to another region. The region selection can be changed as described here.
What is a "home region"?
Each user in the bwCloud-OS is initially assigned a home region during the setup. For users from the four operating locations this assignment is of course trivial. For users from other locations we have oriented ourselves to the network topology of the BelWü. The goal of the current assignment is the shortest possible connection of the respective location to one of our operating sites.
For users, the assignment is usually not relevant. A table with the assignment can be found here.
Where do I select the region in the dashboard?
In the left half of the top navigation bar in the dashboard you can click on a drop-down menu to display the regions. The currently selected region is marked with a tick. A click on the respective region switches there.
