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Distributing Your Data
The database is the basic unit you use for jobs such as replication, performing
backups, and restoring data. You can carve a single directory into manageable
chunks and assign them to separate databases. These databases can then be
distributed among a number of servers, reducing the work load for each server.
You can store more than one database on a single server. For example, one server
might contain three different databases.
When you divide your directory tree across several databases, each database
contains a portion of your directory tree, called a suffix. For example, you can use a
database to store the entries in the
branch of your directory tree.
When you divide your directory among several servers, each server is responsible
for only a part of the directory tree. The distributed directory works similarly to the
Domain Name Service (DNS), which assigns each portion of the DNS namespace to
a particular DNS server. Likewise, you can distribute your directory namespace
across servers while maintaining a directory that, from a client's point of view,
appears to be a single directory tree.
The Directory Server also provides knowledge references, mechanisms for linking
directory data stored in different databases. Directory Server includes two types of
knowledge references, referrals and chaining.
The remainder of this chapter describes databases and knowledge references,
explains the differences between the two types of knowledge references, and
describes how you can design indexes to improve the performance of your
databases.
Distributing Your Data
Distributing your data allows you to scale your directory across multiple servers
without physically containing those directory entries on each server in your
enterprise. A distributed directory can thus hold a much larger number of entries
than would be possible with a single server.
In addition, you can configure your directory to hide the distributing details from
the user. As far as users and applications are concerned, there is simply a single
directory that answers their directory queries.
The following sections describe the mechanics of data distribution in more detail:
•
About Using Multiple Databases
•
About Suffixes
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Netscape Directory Server Deployment Guide • January 2002
ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
suffix, or
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