Replication Survey; Replication Resource Requirements - Netscape DIRECTORY SERVER 7.0 - DEPLOYMENT Deployment Manual

Defining a Replication Strategy
• Using Replication for Load Balancing
• Example Replication Strategy for a Small Site
• Example Replication Strategy for a Large Site

Replication Survey

The type of information you need to gather from your survey to help you define
your replication strategy includes:
• Quality of the LANs and WANs connecting different buildings or remote
sites and the amount of available bandwidth.
• Physical location of users, how many users are at each site, and what is their
activity.
• The number of applications that access the directory and relative percentage
of read/search/compare operations to write operations.
If your messaging server uses the directory, you need to know how many
operations it performs for each email message it handles. Other products that
rely on directory are typically products such as authentication applications or
meta-directory applications. For each one, you must find out the type and
frequency of operations that are performed in the directory.
• The number and size of the entries stored in the directory.
A site that manages human resource databases or financial information is
likely to put a heavier load on your directory than a site containing
engineering staff that uses the directory for simple telephone book purposes.

Replication Resource Requirements

Using replication requires more resources. Consider the following resource
requirements when defining your replication strategy:
• Disk usage — On supplier servers, the change log is written after each update
operation. Supplier servers receiving many update operations may see higher
disk usage.
In addition, as there is a single change log on every supplier server, if a
supplier contains multiple replicated databases, the change log will be used
more frequently, and the disk usage will be even higher.
122 Netscape Directory Server Deployment Guide • October 2004