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"A lot of people think falsely that if you can put one million users on a system, that it is really scalable," Reid says. "See if you can put 20,000 users on a network spread across 80 countries. That's what scalability means: Join and organize them over slow links, no links, the Internet or whatever else is available." And make it work, without spending nights at the office.
The NDS eDirectory installation at True North, a company with revenue of $1.4 billion, started as a way to authenticate and provide access to 7,300 users of Netscape's messaging system.
Reid chose to move to NDS eDirectory last year in large part because of its replication characteristics. He knew the synchronization process Novell uses is reliable, and that he and his crew wouldn't spend time resynching directories. He also knew that NDS eDirectory was the only directory that supported multimaster write replicas. In a multimaster replica, information is independently maintained on two or more directory servers. If conflicting changes are made to the directory at the same time, resolution takes place automatically so the change one user makes isn't deleted by another user. Additionally, NDS eDirectory gave Reid the ability to move users to different containers in the tree, without having to delete and re-add them, while still maintaining the users' associations with other objects and groups.
Reid started implementing Novell directory servers last August and finished expanding the company's directory tree to 50 servers in May. He used Novell's utility, NDS Manager, to push the replica over the WAN connection to each new server. Once the replica is in place on each new server, synchronization automatically takes place.
Reid's directory servers run predominantly on Solaris 2.6; only a few are on Windows NT 4.0. None of the directory servers run on NetWare, but several may run on Linux in the future.
As the company acquires business units and expands into new regions regularly, Reid planned for the directory to be readily expandable. It presently consists of 12,000 objects synchronized across all 50 directory servers to provide close and quick access for all True North employees. In one year, Reid expects the directory to expand to 14,000 objects, with another additional 4,000 customer objects.
Reid chose a single replica so all users on his global network could access directory information as quickly as possible. Each office in a city has its own container, and as True North acquires businesses it may merge or graft their directories into the tree rather than adding new objects.
"We have several large sites that are already running NDS Corporate Edition and using NetWare for file and print," Reid says. He says he will likely use separate trees but use DIRSYNCH, a Novell utility, to synchronize them. He expects to use DIRSYNCH to integrate sites that have Windows 2000 with Active Directory.
At present, Reid's directory and indexes use about 40M bytes of disk space. Only changes to the directory are sent across WAN links to other directory servers. Several timeservers, which are synchronized with an outside source, keep directory information intact.
Reid also looks forward to filtered replication, which will let him limit the data that is synchronized across directory servers to only those attributes each office wants to track. Novell's filtered replication feature is in beta test and will be released this summer.
Directory engineers are centralized in Chicago with the exception of a European administrator who takes care of directory activities for True North locations in England, Germany and France.
Users who log on to a variety of network operating systems for their other database, scheduling, word processing and graphic applications can access the directory from their location, add or update their own user objects and in some cases create new objects. Directory synchronization updates each directory server with the changes. When users need to use a white pages application that uses information stored in NDS eDirectory, they log on to the Directory Browser LDAP software Reid has installed from Intracus. Directory Browser makes information stored in NDS eDirectory available across the entire organization via a Web interface.
The companywide directory project Reid has embarked on has three overall phases. Reid expects to complete the first phase, identifying True North employees and offices and importing that data into the Novell directory, by the end of July.
The second phase is to identify the services the directory is going to track - things such as branding of True North's agencies - so users don't have to look outside True North for help with branding or other ad campaign activities.
Third, Reid will work to identify the clients True North works with and build a directory schema that lists who has worked on each campaign, the customer contacts and the collateral that True North created for each customer. He may place this information in a separate database and use Novell's metadirectory DirXML or database standards such as Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity or SQL to access information.
In one year, Reid hopes to complete integration of applications with True North's directory. He expects to replicate information between many Microsoft Exchange servers and the NDS eDirectory tree. He also needs to tie in the offices that use Novell's GroupWise and determine how human resources database PeopleSoft will be accessed and synchronized.
Organizing the information infrastructure of a business around a directory is a big task and one Reid says Novell's NDS eDirectory is prepared to surmount.
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Articles, primers and lots of useful info on NDS and ADS
Expanding on NDS
True North Communications taps Novell's NDS eDirectory for widespread scalability features.
 
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By DENI CONNOR
Network World, 06/19/00
True North Communications is a big company, and like in any multinational company, it's often difficult to find people, track down their telephone extensions or discover the city they work in.
"A lot of people think falsely that if you can put one million users on a system, that it is really scalable," Reid says. "See if you can put 20,000 users on a network spread across 80 countries. That's what scalability means: Join and organize them over slow links, no links, the Internet or whatever else is available." And make it work, without spending nights at the office.
The NDS eDirectory installation at True North, a company with revenue of $1.4 billion, started as a way to authenticate and provide access to 7,300 users of Netscape's messaging system.
Reid chose to move to NDS eDirectory last year in large part because of its replication characteristics. He knew the synchronization process Novell uses is reliable, and that he and his crew wouldn't spend time resynching directories. He also knew that NDS eDirectory was the only directory that supported multimaster write replicas. In a multimaster replica, information is independently maintained on two or more directory servers. If conflicting changes are made to the directory at the same time, resolution takes place automatically so the change one user makes isn't deleted by another user. Additionally, NDS eDirectory gave Reid the ability to move users to different containers in the tree, without having to delete and re-add them, while still maintaining the users' associations with other objects and groups.
Reid started implementing Novell directory servers last August and finished expanding the company's directory tree to 50 servers in May. He used Novell's utility, NDS Manager, to push the replica over the WAN connection to each new server. Once the replica is in place on each new server, synchronization automatically takes place.
Reid's directory servers run predominantly on Solaris 2.6; only a few are on Windows NT 4.0. None of the directory servers run on NetWare, but several may run on Linux in the future.
As the company acquires business units and expands into new regions regularly, Reid planned for the directory to be readily expandable. It presently consists of 12,000 objects synchronized across all 50 directory servers to provide close and quick access for all True North employees. In one year, Reid expects the directory to expand to 14,000 objects, with another additional 4,000 customer objects.
Reid chose a single replica so all users on his global network could access directory information as quickly as possible. Each office in a city has its own container, and as True North acquires businesses it may merge or graft their directories into the tree rather than adding new objects.
"We have several large sites that are already running NDS Corporate Edition and using NetWare for file and print," Reid says. He says he will likely use separate trees but use DIRSYNCH, a Novell utility, to synchronize them. He expects to use DIRSYNCH to integrate sites that have Windows 2000 with Active Directory.
At present, Reid's directory and indexes use about 40M bytes of disk space. Only changes to the directory are sent across WAN links to other directory servers. Several timeservers, which are synchronized with an outside source, keep directory information intact.
Reid also looks forward to filtered replication, which will let him limit the data that is synchronized across directory servers to only those attributes each office wants to track. Novell's filtered replication feature is in beta test and will be released this summer.
Directory engineers are centralized in Chicago with the exception of a European administrator who takes care of directory activities for True North locations in England, Germany and France.
Users who log on to a variety of network operating systems for their other database, scheduling, word processing and graphic applications can access the directory from their location, add or update their own user objects and in some cases create new objects. Directory synchronization updates each directory server with the changes. When users need to use a white pages application that uses information stored in NDS eDirectory, they log on to the Directory Browser LDAP software Reid has installed from Intracus. Directory Browser makes information stored in NDS eDirectory available across the entire organization via a Web interface.
The companywide directory project Reid has embarked on has three overall phases. Reid expects to complete the first phase, identifying True North employees and offices and importing that data into the Novell directory, by the end of July.
The second phase is to identify the services the directory is going to track - things such as branding of True North's agencies - so users don't have to look outside True North for help with branding or other ad campaign activities.
Third, Reid will work to identify the clients True North works with and build a directory schema that lists who has worked on each campaign, the customer contacts and the collateral that True North created for each customer. He may place this information in a separate database and use Novell's metadirectory DirXML or database standards such as Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity or SQL to access information.
In one year, Reid hopes to complete integration of applications with True North's directory. He expects to replicate information between many Microsoft Exchange servers and the NDS eDirectory tree. He also needs to tie in the offices that use Novell's GroupWise and determine how human resources database PeopleSoft will be accessed and synchronized.
Organizing the information infrastructure of a business around a directory is a big task and one Reid says Novell's NDS eDirectory is prepared to surmount.
Related linksContact Senior Editor Deni Connor
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