Re: OpenLDAP's backend for performance and high reliability

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Tommy Pham wrote:

> After thinking about the robustness of OpenLDAP due to it's BDB backend, 
> I tried to convert over to back-sql and use MySQL 5.0.45 for it's 
> backend.

What thinking did you do? Both back-bdb and back-hdb are fully ACID-compliant 
transactional backends. There is nothing more reliable, anywhere.

It seems you haven't read the FAQ yet.
http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/1165.html

> Here are a few case studies scenario where I see issues:

> The database server is then reconfigured to be 
> clustered. All OpenLDAP servers connect to the database cluster. 
> (Alternatives? Still possible with OpenLDAP+back-bdb in master/slave 
> replication? What about performance and high reliability?)

Back-bdb and back-hdb are the most reliable and highest performance LDAP 
backends in the world, bar none. The backends are proven to scale to manage 
hundreds of millions of entries at transaction rates and response times many 
times faster than any other directory software in the world. You can benchmark 
them yourself against any software of your choice, the result will always be 
the same.

Back-sql exists to provide LDAP access to legacy SQL data; it's not suitable 
for general-purpose LDAP use. The SQL translation layer will always impose a 
large performance cost; it can never perform as well as a native backend.

Distributing data across clusters tends to be less cost-effective than using a 
single large database. E.g. using LVM Logical Volume Management it's trivial 
to add storage capacity to an existing database, without the need of 
clustering protocol overhead.
--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP     http://www.openldap.org/project/