Directory Design Examples; Design Example: A Local Enterprise - Red Hat DIRECTORY SERVER 8.1 - DEPLOYMENT Deployment Manual

Chapter 9.

Directory Design Examples

The design the directory service depends on the size and nature of the enterprise. This chapter
provides a couple of examples of how a directory can be applied within a variety of different settings.
These examples are a starting point for developing a real-life directory service deployment plan.

9.1. Design Example: A Local Enterprise

Example Corp., an automobile parts manufacturer, is a small company that consists of 500
employees. Example Corp. decides to deploy Red Hat Directory Server to support the directory-
enabled applications it uses.
9.1.1. Local Enterprise Data Design
Example Corp. first decides the type of data it will store in the directory. To do this, Example Corp.
creates a deployment team that performs a site survey to determine how the directory will be used.
The deployment team determines the following:
• Example Corp.'s directory will be used by a messaging server, a web server, a calendar server, a
human resources application, and a white pages application.
• The messaging server performs exact searches on attributes such as uid, mailServerName, and
mailAddress. To improve database performance, Example Corp. will maintain indexes for these
attributes to support searches by the messaging server.
For more information on using indexes, see
Performance".
• The white pages application frequently searches for user names and phone numbers. The directory
therefore needs to be capable of frequent substring, wildcard, and fuzzy searches, which return
large sets of results. Example Corp. decides to maintain presence, equality, approximate, and
substring indexes for the cn, sn, and givenName attributes and presence, equality, and substring
indexes for the telephoneNumber attribute.
• Example Corp.'s directory maintains user and group information to support an LDAP server-based
intranet deployed throughout the organization. Most of Example Corp.'s user and group information
will be centrally managed by a group of directory administrators. However, Example Corp. also
wants email information to be managed by a separate group of mail administrators.
• Example Corp. plans to support public key infrastructure (PKI) applications in the future, such as S/
MIME email, so it needs to be prepared to store users' public key certificates in the directory.
9.1.2. Local Enterprise Schema Design
Example Corp.'s deployment team decides to use the inetOrgPerson object class to represent the
entries in the directory. This object class is appealing because it allows the userCertificate and
uid (userID) attributes, both of which are needed by the applications supported by Example Corp.'s
directory.
Example Corp. also wants to customize the default directory schema. Example Corp. creates the
examplePerson object class to represent employees of Example Corp. It derives this object class
from the inetOrgPerson object class.
Section 5.4, "Using Indexes to Improve Database
137