Re: OpenLDAP vs NetScape

[Ron Chmara <ron@Opus1.COM>]

Rafael Neitzel wrote:
> Netscape Directory Server is a very good LDAP Server but very expensive.

Think about the "Jaguar" cars. Very fast. Very sleek. When it breaks,
it may cost you more than a new motorcycle to fix. And it will break,
because all of that speed takes a toll.

> NS Directory also have (IMHO) serious problems in Master Server (Here!).
> In many situations my master server go down and corrupt my database and
> I need to reimport the database from ldif and replicate all replicas
> again.

It's not just you. I've worked with multiple sites using NS and this
is just the price for all of that speed. Every single site I've
been two considers NS LDAP rebuilding to be part of maintenance. The
worst one was re-importing all data weekly, and restarting the
directory server 5-6 times a day. The best ones were rebuilding every
5-6 months, and restarting the server monthly.
 
> OpenLDAP is also a very good LDAP Server but for mission critical
> Directories, NS Directory is better because he is more stable than
> OpenLDAP.

I would partially disagree with this, at least on X86. It also depends on
the OS.
For example, if you suggested that NS on X86/NT was more stable than OpenLDAP
on X86/OpenBSD, I'd strongly disagree.
If you said that NS was more stable than OpenLDAP on a Sun E10000, I'd
agree.

> Whit Millions of entries all operations in OpenLDAP is more slow than NS
> Directory.
> For little directories whith thousands of entries OpenLDAP is the right
> choice.
> For big directories with Millions of entries NS Directory is the right
> choice.

This is also a function of designing the namespace, and the servers you
are building.... if your "big directory" is really 8 smaller ones, just
housed on one machine, you can also split that into serveral machines.

If you wish to put licensing fees into buying more hardware, and run
15 slave hosts, openldap searches on 16 slaves can be *much* faster
than on one.

-Ronabop


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