Scalability isn't everything for NDS 8

How many of Novell's traditional small to midsize enterprise customers need a version of Novell Directory Services (NDS) that can store as many as a billion objects?

Survey says: not too many.

So when we decided to give the recently released NDS Version 8 a test drive, we deemed it fruitless to replicate Novell's continuing efforts to push the upper limits of the product's scalability.

It took the company's own engineers several weeks to build a network large enough - 28 very large NetWare 5 servers in all - to support an NDS 8 system containing more than one billion objects. This massive directory was publicly demonstrated at Novell's BrainShare conference in March, but Novell has yet to release detailed performance data.

Instead, we looked at this latest version of NDS to judge how smoothly the upgrade process works and to see whether NDS 8 could make life any easier for corporate network managers.

We installed NDS 8 - Version 8.11, specifically - on a NetWare 5 server running NDS 6, the version of NDS that ships with NetWare 5.

The physical server was a Micron Vetix LXI machine with a 266-MHz Pentium II CPU and 128M bytes of RAM. To complete the NDS 8 upgrade, we first had to apply NetWare 5 Service Pack 2, which, among other things, upgraded NDS 6 to NDS 7 and incorporates all the updates of Service Pack 1.

We would have preferred to see Service Pack 2 included in the NDS 8 upgrade itself, since loading it separately just adds another step to the process. We then installed the NDS 8 upgrade.

After rebooting the server, we had NDS 8 up and running smoothly.

One of the most useful features of NDS 8 is a complete implementation of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Version 3.0. For example, NDS 8 supports LDAP referrals, which refer the client to another LDAP server if the information the client is requesting is not contained in the NDS 8 database. NDS 8 also allows an LDAP client to access directory information over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection. We found the LDAP access via SSL to work transparently, as expected.

NDS 8 also supports LDAP's Data Interchange Format (LDIF), which is a data format that simplifies the process of bulk loading data into NDS.

LDIF makes populating a large NDS system much easier and is done with the new bulkload utility bundled with NDS 8.

We tested importing data for 1,000 users into NDS. We made a number of mistakes while formatting the LDIF file, which is easy to do as LDIF has a complex layout.

Once we got the format right, the rest of the process was straightforward - we just told the bulkload utility where to find the LDIF file and the data for the thousand users loaded in just over 16 seconds.

Fairly painless, but we think Novell should consider bundling a tool to map from common data formats, such as comma separated variable format, to LDIF.

Browsing the catalog

Novell introduced catalogs with NDS 6. Catalogs are "snapshots" of data items in the NDS tree that, because they are static data, can be accessed faster than the data in the rest of an NDS tree.

Catalogs also let system managers publish controlled sets of NDS data and determine exactly when the set is updated.

Catalogs let network administrators define how LDAP clients gain access to NDS 8 information. They can give clients access to live NDS data or to only cataloged NDS data.

Alternatively, an administrator can let clients use the catalogs first and then fall back to the live NDS 8 database itself if the information is not contained in the catalogs.

Using catalogs provides the best performance for a client search and ensures that a WAN link to a central NDS 8 server will not be opened.

Again, we found using catalogs to be straightforward. Under the NetWare administration utility, NWAdmin, we defined a catalog for the 1,000 users we imported into the NDS 8 database. We could then search the catalog using Novell's catalog query facility in NWAdmin or using any LDAP client.

A key feature included in NetWare 5 was ConsoleOne. Written in Java, this utility provides a consistent management interface for all NetWare, NDS and third-party administration tools.

This is a very ambitious utility, and with Service Pack 2 and the NDS 8 upgrade, Novell has taken ConsoleOne most of the way to replacing the standard NWAdmin utility.

Where ConsoleOne stops short is in the speed department. ConsoleOne is much slower than NWAdmin. In addition, it is more difficult to use.

For example, setting the frequency with which our test catalog should be updated using ConsoleOne was far more complex than with NWAdmin. We decided we would not want to have to rely on ConsoleOne just yet.

The bottom line is that NetWare 5 with NDS 8 certainly does have the potential to support enterprise-scale organizations. We found NDS 8 itself to be at least as fast as previous version while adding a lot more functionality. If you want LDAP services or are committed to keeping as up-to-date with NetWare upgrades as possible, you will want to install NDS 8.

Net Results

Novell Directory Services version 8
(888) 321-4272
Web site
Pricing: Free upgrade for NetWare 5 users
Pros: Increased scalability and performance; Complete LDAP v.3 integration; Easy population of NDS via LDIF
Cons: Service Pack 2 for NetWare 5 should be incorporated in NDS 8 upgrade; Standard formats to LDIF translator required; Documentation could be improved

RELATED LINKS

Gibbs is author of Network World's Backspin and Gearhead columns and is a member of the Network World Test Alliance.

NetResults
Key findings and vendor contact info.

NDS 8.0: Over one billion objects served
More on giant directories. Network World, 4/19/99.

NDS partners are rock solid
Novell and its third parties will offer policy-based applications by year-end. Network World, 7/5/99.

Browse other recent Network World articles about NDS
From the past six months, ranked in order of relevancy.