Ongoing Costs of Providing Your Directory Service

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 25. Case Study: A Large Multinational Enterprise

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Chapter 25. Case Study: A Large Multinational Enterprise

In this chapter we look at how a large multinational enterprise might design and deploy an LDAP directory service. Large organizations typically spend much more time and money up front to design a good directory service than small organizations do. There are several reasons why the extra investment is necessary:

• Large organizations tend to be more decentralized in terms of geography, political control, and information systems management. It is difficult to bring an organizationwide service such as a directory online because of all the physical and political boundaries that separate the different parts of the organization.

• Data about important organizational assets (including people) is typically controlled by a group different from the one charged with deploying the directory service. This increases the amount of coordination and political cooperation needed to obtain the data and deploy the directory.

• The complexity and cost of managing a directory service consisting of a large number of servers is significant enough that a lot of time and money is typically spent designing and piloting to ensure that the process of putting the service into production goes smoothly.

• The cost of a design error is greater than in smaller deployments. Because of the large number of servers rolled out and the complexity of data maintenance and other issues, a redesign of a large-scale directory late in the design process causes more pain and expense than it would in smaller deployments.

The large multinational enterprise case study discussed in this chapter is fictional ”it is not based directly on any real-world directory deployments. However, this case study draws from knowledge of several actual deployments we are familiar with. The enterprise we describe is patterned after a manufacturing company such as Ford Motor Company, Boeing, or Intel. The name of our fictitious company is HugeCo. This case study is written as if HugeCo's directory service has been deployed as a production service for approximately six months.

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services,  2002 New Riders Publishing

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Index terms contained in this section

case studies
          HugeCo 2nd 3rd 4th
directories
         case studies
                    HugeCo 2nd 3rd 4th
HugeCo case study 2nd 3rd 4th

2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.