Novell EDIRECTORY 8.8 SP5 Quick start guide

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AUTHORIZED DOCUMENTATION
Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms
eDirectory TM
8.8 SP5
July, 2009
Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms

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4Novell eDirectory Tuning Guide for UNIX* Platforms
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About This Guide 5
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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
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Overview
1
9
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1
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
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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.