A Redpaper: I’m published!

At last, I was involved in writing a document for IBM that has my name on it! I’ve been the person responsible for writing and releasing the IBM Tivoli Identity Manager Tuning Guides for many years now, but since they are really a roll-up of information from a variety of sources, including myself, none of them have any names on them.

Over the past several months I’ve been involved in writing, contributing, and proofing a Redpaper titled Performance Tuning for IBM Tivoli Directory Server. The document came about as a ‘meeting of the minds’ of several IBMers who work with ITDS on a daily basis. My main contributions are sections 6.5 through 6.9 and the corresponding scripts referenced therein. These are the same scripts that we’ve been releasing with the ITIM tuning guides for quite some time now but were seen as useful enough to reach a broader audience. In addition, section 2.4 (and subsections) were based on some early versions of my scripts that were later enhanced by other IBMers. The other authors had no idea until our first meeting that the 2.4 scripts were initially created by me :)

The Abstract of the paper was taken straight from the original introduction which I wrote most of. What I find particularly funny is that the current text is a rewrite of an early draft from the other contributors. After trying to make sense of it during the first review, I threw my hands up in the air and rewrote the whole thing. While I am far from a good writer, I am apparently better than any of the other contributors (likely due to hanging out with mbock, jonobie, and quindo who aren’t allowed to find errors in the doc now that it has been published :).

For your viewing pleasure, the abstract:

In today’s highly connected world, directory servers are the IT cornerstone of many businesses. These components of the corporate infrastructure are the foundation of authentication systems for internal, and more commonly, external user populations. Managing a directory server with several hundred internal users is not all that difficult. However, when managing a directory server with several million external users in all 24 time zones throughout the world is a much more daunting task.

IBM Tivoli Directory Server is capable of handling millions of entries given the right architecture, configuration, and performance tuning — tunings that can differ greatly from that of a smaller server with only a few hundred thousand entries. Managing and tuning a directory server of this size requires a change in mindset: No longer can tuning be done after the fact. Tuning and performance must be a focus before the hardware is even ordered. A proactive role must be taken after installation as well, including pre-tuning steps to better interface with other products to make installations and migrations more successful, and regular maintenance to keep the directory well tuned and running smoothly.

This IBM Redpaper is the cumulation of lessons learned in many different real-world environments, including a 24-server fault tolerant configuration with over 300 million entries. The authors have pooled their collective knowledge and resources to provide the most comprehensive performance view possible, from hardware to software, sort heaps to buffer pools, and table cardinalities to explain plans. In large directory server deployments, use this document as an outline on how to get the right fit for your environment.