Novell EDIRECTORY 8.8 SP5 Quick start guide

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AUTHORIZED DOCUMENTATION

Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

eDirectory

8.8 SP5

July, 2009

Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

novdocx (en) 22 June 2009

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4Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

novdocx (en) 22 June 2009

About This Guide 5

novdocx (en) 22 June 2009

About This Guide

Welcome to Novell®eDirectoryTM 8.8. This guide describes how to analyze and tune Novell®

eDirectoryTM on UNIX* platforms to yield superior performance in all deployments.

This guide introduces the following:

Chapter 1, “Overview,” on page 9

Chapter 2, “eDirectory Subsystems,” on page 11

Chapter 3, “Analyzing System Bottlenecks,” on page 15

Chapter 4, “Tuning eDirectory Subsystems,” on page 19

Chapter 5, “eDirectory Configuration,” on page 27

Audience

The guide is intended for network administrators.

Additional Documentation

For more information about eDirectory 8.8, refer to the following:

Novell eDirectory 8.8 Installation Guide

Novell eDirectory 8.8 Administration Guide

Novell eDirectory 8.8 What’s New Guide

Novell eDirectory 8.8 Troubleshooting Guide

These guides are available at Novell eDirectory 8.8 documentation Web site (http://

www.novell.com/documentation/edir88/index.html).

For information about the eDirectory management utility, see the Novell iManager 2.7

Administration Guide (http://www.novell.com/documentation/imanager27/index.html).

Documentation Conventions

In this documentation, a greater-than symbol (>) is used to separate actions within a step and items

within a cross-reference path.

A trademark symbol (®, TM, etc.) denotes a Novell trademark. An asterisk (*) denotes a third-party

trademark.

When a single pathname can be written with a backslash for some platforms or a forward slash for

other platforms, the pathname is presented with a backslash. Users of platforms that require a

forward slash, such as Linux* and UNIX*, should use forward slashes as required by your software.

6Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

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Contents 7

Contents

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About This Guide 5

1Overview 9

1.1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2 eDirectory Subsystems 11

2.1 FLAIM Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.1.1 Checkpoint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.1.2 Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.1.3 Roll-Forward Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.2 Thread Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3 Analyzing System Bottlenecks 15

3.1 Disk I/O Subsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2 CPU Subsystem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.3 Memory Subsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.4 Network Subsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4 Tuning eDirectory Subsystems 19

4.1 FLAIM Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

4.1.1 Choosing Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.1.2 Tuning for Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.2 Thread Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.3 ACLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.3.1 Improving eDirectory Searches and Reads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.3.2 Disabling ACL Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.4 Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.5 SSL Overhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.6 64-Bit Versus 32-Bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.7 Import Convert and Export (ICE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.8 ldif2dib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 eDirectory Configuration 27

5.1 Configuring the FLAIM Subsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

5.1.1 Hard Cache Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

5.1.2 Dynamically Adjusting the Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

5.2 Modifying FLAIM Cache Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

5.2.1 Modifying FLAIM Cache Settings through iMonitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.2.2 Modifying FLAIM Cache Settings through _ndsdb.ini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

8Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

novdocx (en) 22 June 2009

Overview

novdocx (en) 22 June 2009

Overview

Novell® eDirectory 8.8TM is a standards-compliant, cross-platform, highly scalable, fault-tolerant,

and high-performance directory services solution. This guide provides information on tuning your

eDirectory environment for improved performance.

Tuning for performance is a complex activity. It requires understanding of both the eDirectory and

operating system's subsystems. It involves monitoring the system to identify bottlenecks and fixing

them one at a time. Many a times resources are limited and tuning is confined to eDirectory and the

operating system.

In this guide, read the Prerequisites section before attempting any kind of tuning, then proceed to the

other sections. eDirectory Subsystems chapter describes primary subsystems that influence

eDirectory performance. Analyzing System Bottlenecks chapter describes various system resources

and their influence on eDirectory performance. Tuning eDirectory Subsystems chapter describes

how to analyze and tune eDirectory under various conditions and environments. Finally, the

eDirectory Configuration chapter describes how to configure various tunable parameters.

1.1 Prerequisites

Ensure that the following general prerequisites are met before attempting to tune the system for

performance:

A good eDirectory tree design (http://www.novell.com/documentation/edir88/edir88/data/

a2iiido.html) can enhance eDirectory performance. The following considerations might apply:

Applications read all the information locally on the server without needing to chain the

requests.

eDirectory efficiently handles object references automatically. If possible, objects on a

server should not refer to objects that are not local on that server, because maintaining

non-local object references can take more time. If such references exist, backlinks must be

maintained. This becomes cumbersome in large deployments.

If you need a group with 10,000 members or more, dynamic groups are recommended.

This allows you to avoid the overhead associated with maintaining references for so many

people. Choose your dynamic group configuration carefully, because using multiple

dynamic groups with improper search criteria might overload the server and reduce

overall server performance. If a search operation takes a long time to complete, the chosen

index might be inefficient. Minimize the use of regular(static) groups as this can increase

tree walking on login.

Use ACLs efficiently. For example, use the [This] trustee and assign it at the container

level instead of using an ACL template that assigns rights to itself. The fewer ACLs, the

better the performance. For more information on ACLs, refer to the Access Control List

(http://www.novell.com/documentation/edir88/edir88/data/fbachifb.html) in the Novell

eDirectory 8.8 Administration Guide.

Distribute the load onto multiple replica servers.

10 Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

novdocx (en) 22 June 2009

Although a good tree design minimizes the need for tree walking, it is still sometimes

necessary. Advanced Referral Costing (http://www.novell.com/documentation/edir88/

edir88/data/b9u7705.html) can be considered.

If logins are slow, you can disable login updates. There are separate ways to disable login

updates for both NDS® and NMASTM logins. However, it is important to understand the

security implications (http://www.novell.com/documentation/nmas33/admin/

index.html?page=/documentation/nmas33/admin/data/bg8dphs.html).

Run health checks (http://www.novell.com/documentation/edir88/edir88/data/a5ziqam.html)

through iMonitor. Ensure the following:

Time is in sync across all replica servers.

Replica synchronization and background processes are in a healthy state.

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