Chapter 14. Piloting Your Directory Service

• A Piloting Road Map

• Piloting Your Directory Service Checklist

• Looking Ahead

One of the most important milestones in your directory's life cycle is achieved when you pilot the service. Until this point your design has existed only in documents, on whiteboards , and in your head. During the pilot stage, you move from paper to programs, from design to deployment, and from theory to practice. You get your first look at how well your design works in something approaching a real environment. You begin to see how well the software performs , how smoothly your data maintenance procedures work, and how receptive the users of your directory are to the service. Then you modify your design according to feedback from the pilot.

Piloting is important for the following reasons:

• No matter how complete a design you believe you have produced, there will always be things you did not think of that show up only when the service is actually running, and piloting can help find these design flaws.

• Piloting is the best way to provide all users of your service an early look at what you're planning. Getting their feedback early and responding to it is key to producing a successful directory deployment.

• Management often likes to see something tangible before committing additional resources. Piloting can provide an important political tool for you to gain continued funding, extra resources, or other benefits for your project.

• Piloting is the best way to determine how well your directory serves the needs of your directory-enabled applications.

In this chapter we present a road map to guide you through the process of piloting your directory service. We focus on the following:

• Prepilot testing, in which you ensure that the directory software you have chosen will perform well in your environment

• Determining the goals and scope of your pilot

• Determining the piloting environment you need

• How to collect feedback on your pilot and how to scale up your pilot to simulate the load that the service will experience in production

• How to analyze the feedback generated from your pilot experience and the implications the feedback has on your design, and how to make changes to the design