Overview of the Organization
Directory Drivers
Directory Service Design
Directory Service Deployment
Directory Service Maintenance
Leveraging the Directory Service
Summary and Lessons Learned
Further Reading
Looking Ahead
In this chapter we look at how a large multinational enterprise might design and deploy an LDAP directory service. Large organizations typically spend more time and money up front to design a directory service than small organizations do. The extra investment is necessary for several reasons:
Large organizations tend to be more decentralized in terms of geography, political control, and information systems management. It is difficult to bring an organizationwide service like a central directory online because of all the physical, organizational, and political boundaries that separate the different parts of the organization.
Data about important organizational assets (including people) is typically controlled by a group different from the one charged with deploying the directory service. This separation of control increases the amount of coordination required to obtain the data and deploy the directory.
The complexity and cost of the components that make up the directory service are significant enough that a large investment in design and piloting is needed to ensure that the service smoothly enters its production phase.
The cost of a design error is greater than in smaller deployments. Because of the large number of servers rolled out and the complexity of data maintenance and related issues, redesigning a large-scale directory late in the design process causes more pain and expense than redesigning a smaller deployment would.
The case study discussed in this chapter is fictional; it is not based directly on any real-world directory deployments. However, this case study draws from knowledge of several actual deployments with which we are familiar. The large, multinational enterprise we describe is patterned after a manufacturing company such as Ford Motor Company, Boeing, or Intel. The name of our fictitious company is HugeCo. This case study assumes that HugeCo's directory service has been deployed as a production service for approximately six months.