Introduction to Monitoring
Selecting and Developing Monitoring Tools
Notification Techniques
Taking Action
A Sample Directory Monitoring Utility
Performance Analysis
Monitoring Checklist
Further Reading
Looking Ahead
To deploy a reliable directory service that meets your users' expectations, you need to develop and implement a monitoring strategy. Your monitoring system should help you attain three main goals:
To quickly detect and be able to remedy failures of your directory service
To anticipate and resolve potential problems before they result in failure
To understand the usage patterns of your directory to aid you in capacity planning
In this chapter we first discuss general monitoring principles and the various types of monitoring strategies you might use. Then we cover the various types of monitoring systems available, including off-the-shelf network monitoring systems and custom monitoring tools. Next we cover the topic of notification, in which you inform the appropriate people about any problems detected. Then we discuss how to proceed when a failure or degradation of service is detected. We provide a simple monitoring tool, written in Perl, that you can use as a starting point for developing your own custom monitoring system, and we conclude with a discussion of performance monitoring and analysis.