30 April 1998IBM1 Directory Services Best Practices Ellen Stokes, Directory Architect IBM Austin

30 April 1998IBM2 Agenda Why Best Practices Topics –Heterogeneity –Directory Content –Schema and the Namespace –Finding Things Summary

30 April 1998IBM3 Why Best Practices? Aid in planning deployment and use of directory services Avoid the pitfalls & learn from collective experiences, such as –Leverage the directory as a cost effective part of your total distributed solution –Don’t make the directory do what it wasn’t designed to do, e.g. directories are not general purpose RDBMSs –Make effective use of the namespace for flexibility and scalability of applications

30 April 1998IBM4 Heterogeneity The directory space is heterogeneous –Multiple platforms –Multiple directories Portability via APIs Interoperability via Protocols Customer decides how much synergy he wants between directories - there are choices, such as –Meta-directory –Federation –Loose coupling (relationships, e.g. DNS)

30 April 1998IBM5 Directory Content - I Directory content is fairly static Not all data from miscellaneous files goes in the directory –Users, groups, configuration info, location info, policy, user preferences are good candidates –Bootstrap information is not a good candidate Store as discrete entities or blobs? –Discrete entities allows for visual inspection and re-use across products –Blobs limit use to a specific product

30 April 1998IBM6 Directory Content - II Secure sensitive information –Use ACLs: groups and roles to grant rights –Request extensions to encrypt data for privacy digitally sign requests or data for integrity

30 April 1998IBM7 Schema & Namespace - I The namespace is global - structure it –Let the customer define the structure –Hierarchy is good; it aids in partitioning for replication finding information –Limit use of aliases (admin + and -) –Enable schema checking

30 April 1998IBM8 Schema & Namespace - II Schema: model the data –Use industry standard objects and attributes where possible –Extend existing or define new schema as necessary –Use auxiliary object classes where sub-classing not viable, e.g. extending the person object –Use DNs to define relationships

30 April 1998IBM9 Finding Things Directory Servers –Define a ‘home server’ as a user preference –Let the ‘system’ help you DNS DHCP Referrals Objects and attributes –Use well-formed searches

30 April 1998IBM10 Summary Make directory use the default, not the option Do what meets your needs