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Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 14. Analyzing and Reducing Costs > Design, Piloting, and Deployment Costs

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Design, Piloting, and Deployment Costs

The first half of your directory's life cycle includes all the activity up to the point where you throw the switch and put your directory into production. The costs associated with this phase can be broken down into three major areas: design costs, piloting costs, and deployment costs. In this section we examine each of these areas, describe the specific types of costs, and offer some advice on reducing those costs.

Design Costs

As discussedin Part II, "Designing Your Directory Service," the design phase of your directory's life cycle is when you make many important decisions concerning the scope and structure of your directory service. Costs associated with this phase primarily involve staff but include all of the following:

  • Salary and benefits costs.   These include salary and benefits for you and the staff helping you during the design phase. If your design phase involves people from other groups such as your human resources department, be sure to include salary and benefits costs for them. Quantifying these costs will invariably involve some apportioning of staff time between the various phases of the directory life cycle. Also be sure to budget time for the deployers to become familiar with the software; this ensures that they fully understand its capabilities and limitations.

  • Fees paid to outside contractors.   If you retain the services of consultantsto assist you in the design phaseof your directory project, include the fees paid to them in your total design phase costs. As with salaries and benefits, if you employ the services of consultants beyond the design phase, you may need to assign portions of the costs to each phase of the project.

  • Cost of research materials.   As you design your directory service, you will no doubt purchase journal subscriptions, special technology reports , and, of course, books like this one to assist you in making good design choices.

  • Software costs.   During the design phase, you may need to purchase one or more copies of the software you plan to deploy. In some instances, you may be able to avoid these costs, perhaps by using evaluation copies of the software.

  • Training and conference costs.   You will probably need to develop in-housedirectory expertise; therefore, you may incur costs when you send staff members to training seminars and technology conferences.

Reducing Design Costs

In general, you should be careful about cutting costs in the design phase of your directory's life cycle. Studies have repeatedlyshown that mistakes made during the early part of a project are significantly more expensive to correct than mistakes made later in the project. If in doubt, look for other expenses to reduce.

You should be aware of the relative efficiency of attempting your directory design process solely using in-house expertise versus involving outside consultants. Evaluate the directory-specific knowledge of your staff who will design the directory. Are they familiar with directory technology, or will there be significant training costs incurred beforedesign can begin? If directory technology is not something your staff is familiar with, it may be better to bring in consultants who can help you with the design process.

Piloting Costs

During the piloting phase of your directory's life cycle, you obtain invaluable information about your directory design. You learn whether your design assumptions are valid and, if they're not, you have the opportunity to revisit your design and make improvements. As in the design phase, reducing costs in the piloting phase is risky; if you don't obtain useful feedback, your design may not be optimal. When reducing costs in this phase, be sure that you do not compromise your ability to obtain and respond to feedback from your pilot users.

The following are common costs associated with piloting:

  • Pilot equipment costs.   Yourpilot phase, if properly done, includes an actual small-scale directory deployment. The equipment used to provide this pilot deployment might include CPUs, disks, networking hardware, and other hardware used to provide the pilot service.

  • Pilotsoftware costs.   In some cases, you may be able to perform your pilot using trial versions of software, but in other cases you may need to purchase the software.

  • Staff costs ”pilot deployment.   During your pilot phase, you will incur costs associated with installing, configuring, and maintaining the pilot hardware and software.

  • Staff costs ”pilot publicity, feedback, and analysis.   During and after the pilot phase, you will incur costs associated with publicizing your pilot, gathering feedback from pilot users, analyzing that feedback, and refining the directory design and deployment plans.

  • Documentation and training costs.   Your users should have documentationavailable to them during the pilot, including both vendor and in-house documentation. You may also find it helpful to your pilot's success to provide training sessions for your users.

  • Incentives for pilot users.   To obtain the best possible feedback fromyour directory pilot, you might choose to provide incentives to reward pilot users for their participation and feedback.

Reducing Piloting Costs

The piloting phase of your directory life cycle is your opportunity to validate your directory design and anticipate potential problems before going into full production. Therefore, you should ensure that your pilot program gives you the information required for a successful deployment. If your pilot program doesn't give you this information, you need to either do another pilot or proceed without it. Neither outcome is desirable, of course.

To reduce piloting costs, try to pick your pilot participants carefully , explain very clearly what you expect from them, and tell them how they will benefit from their participation. If you don't obtain useful feedback from your pilot users, your pilot will be much less effective than it could have been. On the other hand, if your pilot participants generate useful feedback that helps you validate your basic assumptions and improves the service before it goes into production, your piloting costs represent money well spent.

Deployment Hardware Costs

During the deploymentphase of your directory service, you will purchase the equipment required to provide the full directory service you've been planning. Deployment hardware costs include everything in your infrastructure that is directly used to provide the directory service, including the following:

  • Server costs.   This includes the price of server hardware used to run the directory. Be sure to include the costs of standby units you may purchase as hot or cold spares .

  • Memory upgrades.   If you purchase memory upgrades for your servers from a third-party vendor, be sure to include them in your total deployment costs. If you purchase your memory pre-installed from the same vendor who supplies your servers, memory costs will already be reflected in the price of your servers. Be aware that some server hardware vendors (in particular, those who sell high-end systems) will not honor the factory warranty if third-party optionssuch as memory, disk drives , or network adapters have been installed. Be sure you understand the implications of adding third-party options.

  • Network hardware.   Your servers need to be connected to the network, and thehardware used to accomplish this may include network adapter cards, cabling, hubs, routers, terminal servers for remote maintenance, and other equipment. Of course, some of this equipment may already be deployed in support of other services. You may want to apportion costs among the various services connected to the directory. For more information, see the sidebar "Apportioning Hardware and Software Costs"later in this chapter.

  • Hardware used for monitoring functions.   A network management system (NMS) may already exist within your organization, in which case you may need to allocate a portion of your budgetto maintenance and upgrades of the existing NMS hardware. If none exists and you plan to monitor your directory service, you may need to purchase a system for NMS functions.

  • Physical plant.   You need a place to locate the equipment that provides your directory service. You will almost certainlylocate it with other computing infrastructure services; therefore, you may need to allocate a portion of your budget to the rental costs and upkeep of this facility.

  • Mass-storage devices.   Storage devices for your directory datamight include disk drives or RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) storage units. As with memory, these may be purchased from your server vendor or from a third party.

  • Backup solutions.   Directory data must be backed up to protect against disk failures and disasters such as fires and floods. Backup solutions might include 8mm tape units (sometimes referred to as Exabyte tape drives), digital audio tape (DAT) units, or digital linear tape (DLT) units. You may also choose to back up to a mirrored disk drive or use replication to keep a backup server up-to-date with your directory data.

Reducing Deployment Hardware Costs

There are a number of ways to reduce the cost of hardware used to provide your directory service. First and foremost, deploy your directory service on reliable hardware that scales well. This means using server and network hardware that has sufficient capacity for present needs and that can be upgraded to handle additional capacity. When evaluating hardware vendors, consider the following questions:

  • What is the maximum RAM capacity of this server? Is it sufficient for your current and future needs?

  • Does the hardware permit the required level of reliability and redundancy? For example, are any necessary hot-swappable disks and power supplies available?

  • What mass-storage options are available? Are they sufficient for the size of directory you plan to deploy?

  • Do the hardware and operating system (OS) support multiple CPUs? Can additional CPUs be added easily? Does the directory server software take advantage of multiple CPUs?

  • Does the operating system for this hardware limit you in some undesirable way? For example, can the operating system support very large files (greater than 2GB)? Can the operating system address a large amount of RAM? Can the operating system handle enough TCP connections to carry the load?

  • Are the costs of maintaining the operating system reasonable? Do you have sufficient in-house expertise on the OS platform, and can it be managed efficiently ?

  • Does the network adapter have sufficient throughput to handle the I/O loads planned? Does the network have sufficient capacity to handle the traffic generated by directory clients and servers?

Purchasing a server without sufficient scaling capacity means that you'll need to replace that hardware at some point in the future. This may be unavoidable considering how quicklyCPU speeds are improving and prices are dropping. Ideally, however, you should choose to replace hardware when newer , cheaper, and faster hardware is available and not because your current hardware is overburdened and cannot be upgraded.

Another way to reduce hardware costs is to choose directory server software that runs on multiple hardware and operating system platforms. Choosing this type of software allows you the flexibility to choose the best hardware for the task instead of limiting you to a single hardware and OS platform. But keep in mind that a heterogeneous computing environment is more expensive to maintain than a homogeneous one.

Being creative when negotiating pricing can also help you reduce hardware costs. This may involve purchasing hardware in larger quantities . This approach, of course, may be at odds with deploying your directory in a stepwise fashion, in which you might plan to add additional capacity only as the need arises. However, if you have some idea of how your directory needs will expand, you may be able to negotiate a better price from a vendor by committing to purchase the additional hardware over some period of time. If you can pool your purchases with other projects, you may be able to obtain even more favorable pricing.

Finally, to reduce hardware purchase costs, choose directory server software that is efficient and scales well in terms of:

  • The total number of directory entries stored

  • The total size of the database

  • The average and maximum size of a directory entry

  • The maximum number of concurrent client connections supported

  • The maximum number of LDAP operations that can be performed in a given time period

Ask the software vendor to suggest reasonable hardware configurations for the directory you plan to deploy. Be sure to provide information both on the number of entries you plan to store in your directory and the type of directory client load you plan to place on the directory. You may find that the minimum hardware requirements vary widely depending on the software vendor. Obviously, a directory that can be deployed efficiently on a single server is less expensive to deploy than a directory that requires data to be partitioned among many servers. Does the server software take advantage of multiple CPUs? Or can additional replicas be easily deployed to handle additional client load? The answers to all these questions will help you understand how hardware costs will be affected by your choice of directory server software.

Deployment Software Costs

To deploy your directory service, you need several different types of software. You may also need to develop custom software for your directory service. Software costs might include the following:

  • Operating system software.   Your servers will require an operating system. Depending on the hardware platform, your OS costs may be one-time costs (possibly with upgrade costs in the future), or they may involve an up-front cost and an annual license or maintenance fee.

  • Operating system enhancements.   To enhance performance and reliability, it may be beneficial to purchase additional software that enhances the operating system. For example, you may purchase high-performance file system software, disk mirroring software, high-availability software, and clustering software.

  • Directory server software.   Directory server software may be priced on a per-serverbasis, aper-seat (per- user ) basis, or some other method. Understand the long- term costs of your vendor's pricing model.

  • Utility software.   You may find it beneficial to purchase utilitysoftware to assist you in data maintenance tasks .

  • NMS software.   As described in Chapter 18, "Monitoring," you can use a commercially available NMS package such as Cabletron Spectrum or HP OpenView, or you can develop custom monitoring software. You may be able to leverage an existing deployed NMS system, in which case your costs will be lower.

  • Metadirectory software.   If you need to synchronize a number of dissimilar directories, you may wish to purchase a metadirectory package.

  • Directory client software for end users.   This may include commercially available client software or custom-developed software such as HTML-based interfaces that allow your users to interact with the directory.

  • Development tools for application developers.   If you plan to develop your own directory-enabled applications in-house, you may need to purchase development tools. Generally, LDAP client software development kits are available free of charge, but you may need to purchase compilers, graphical user interface (GUI) libraries, and other utility software needed to develop your applications.

  • Directory-enabled applications.   Along with the deployment of your directory, you may be able to deploy new directory-enabled applications or deploy upgrades to existing applications to make them directory-enabled. More information on directory-enabled applications can be found in Chapters 20, "Developing New Applications," and Chapters 21, "Directory-Enabling Existing Applications."

  • Backup and restore software.   Sometimes backup devices are bundled with backupand restore utility software. Even if this is the case, you may decide to purchase a more comprehensive package if you need, for example, to back up remote network nodes automatically to manage a tape carousel or jukebox.

Reducing Deployment Software Costs

As with hardware costs, software costs are often negotiable. Ask the vendor about various pricing options. Is the pricing per CPU? per server? per user? per entry? If multiple pricing options are available, one might be the best choice for your situation now, but another might benefit you down the road. Be sure to look at future growth when deciding on a pricing model.

Better pricing can often be obtained by purchasing additional software from the vendor at the same time. Take the time to find out if your organization is in (or is planning) negotiations with the vendor over other software. A vendor will often provide more favorable pricing when multiple products are being purchased.

Apportioning Hardware and Software Costs

When you consider the various hardware that comprises your directory service, some items are completely specific to the directory service itself whereas others are shared among all parts of your computing infrastructure. For example, if you have a dedicated machine that you run an LDAP server on, the CPU, memory, disks, monitor, and so on, are used solely to provide the directory service. On the other hand, the router that connects the machine room Ethernet to the rest of your network is shared among a number of services.

Similarly, some software may be shared among multiple services. For example, you might have a site license that allows you to install operating system software on a number of systems throughout your organization. A portion of the site license cost should be attributed to the directory service.

When analyzing costs, you might perform a simple calculation to apportion the costs of these shared resources among the various services. If you have a machine room that houses 50 server computers, and 5 of those servers are dedicated LDAP servers, you might allocate 10% (5 divided by 50) of the total machine room costs to the directory service. These costs cover networking (routers, hubs, cabling, monitoring software), power (AC power, uninterruptible power supplies), air conditioning, and staffing costs, if any.

Of course, this calculation can get more complicated. For example, if the attachment of your directory servers requires an upgrade to the router hardware (to handle the additional load), it might be argued that the directory service should assume the entire cost of the upgrade. On the other hand, it's quite likelythat some other service will eventually be deployed or expanded, necessitating the upgrade. As with most types of budgeting, there are always opinions on both sides.





Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services,  2002 New Riders Publishing
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Index terms contained in this section

analysis
         pilot
                    staff costs
applications
          costs
         development tools
                    costs
backups
         hardware
                    costs
         software
                    costs
benefit costs
          reducing
clients
         software
                    costs
configuring
          server software
contractors
          reducing fees
costs
         reducing
                    deployment hardware 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
                    deployment software 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
                    design costs 2nd 3rd 4th
                    piloting costs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
deployment
         pilot
                    staff costs
         reducing costs
                    hardware 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
                    software 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
design
         costs
                    outside contractor fees
                    reducing 2nd 3rd 4th
                    reducing;salary and benefits
                    research materials
                    software
                    training
development
         applications
                    costs
directories
         costs
                    reducing 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd 24th
documentation
         costs
                    piloting
enhancements
         operating systems
                    software costs
equipment
         costs
                    piloting
feedback
         pilot
                    staff costs
fees
         outside contractors
                    reducing
hardware
         costs
                    apportioning 2nd 3rd
         deployment
                    reducing costs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
         network
                    reducing costs
         prices
                    negotiating
incentives
         user
                    pilot costs
mass-storage devices
          reducing costs
memory
         upgrades
                    reducing costs
metadirectory software costs
monitoring
         hardware
                    reducing costs
negotiating
          hardware prices
          software costs
networks
         hardware
                    reducing costs
NMS
          costs
NMS (network management system)
         hardware
                    reducing costs
operating systems
          software costs
                    enhancements
outside contractors
          reducing fees
performance
         monitoring
                    reducing hardware costs
physical space
          reducing hardware costs
piloting
         costs
                    documentation
                    equipment
                    reducing 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
                    software
                    staff 2nd
                    training
                    user incentives
portability
          server software
prices
         hardware
                    negotiating
publicity
         pilot
                    staff costs
RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)
          reducing costs
reducing
         costs
                    deployment hardware 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
                    deployment software 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
                    design costs 2nd 3rd 4th
                    piloting costs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
research costs
          reducing
salary costs
          reducing
servers
          capacities
                    capacities;server
         costs
                    reducing
         software
                    configuring
                    costs
                    portability
software
         costs
                    applications
                    apportioning 2nd 3rd
                    backup and restore software
                    clients
                    development tools
                    metadirectories
                    NMS
                    operating systems
                    piloting
                    reducing
                    server
                    utility
         deployment
                    reducing costs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
         server
                    portability
         servers
                    configuring
staff
         costs
                    pilot deployment
                    pilot publicity, feedback and analysis
storage
         mass-storage devices
                    reducing costs
training
         costs
                    piloting
                    reducing
upgrades
         memory
                    reducing
users
         costs
                    pilot incentives
utility software
          costs

2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.



Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services
Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672323168
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1997
Pages: 245

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