Directory server tuning overview

You can use the directory server performance statistics to decide when to tune a directory server.

You can store the frequently used LDAP data in the caches to tune an LDAP server to improve the performance of the server. It is important to remember that tuning an LDAP server alone is insufficient. You must also tune DB2® for optimal performance.

To get best results, it is advisable to tune a directory server instance immediately after the instance is configured. If a directory server is not tuned, it is likely to run poorly as the size of the instance grows. The deciding factors that you must consider for tuning a directory server instance.

• Poor or slow search and update response time.
• Considerable execution time for the bulkload command.

To improve poor performance, tune the directory server instance after you load data on the server. Later, update the DB2 system statistics after any large number of updates to the server.

Before you tune a directory server, you must take backup of the instance, database, and configuration files. For more information about directory server backup and restore, see the usage of idsdbback and idsdbrestore commands in IBM® Verify Directory Command Reference.

The fastest way to load and tune a directory server with millions of entries is to configure the server, tune the server, use the bulkload command to load the entries into the server, and finally update the DB2 system statistics.

The most significant performance tuning related to the IBM Verify Directory involves the LDAP caches. LDAP caches are fast storage buffers in memory that stores LDAP information such as queries, results, and user authentication for future use. While LDAP caches are useful mostly for applications that frequently retrieve repeated cached information, they improve performance by avoiding calls to the database. For information about how to tune the LDAP caches, see LDAP caches .