Symlabs Virtual Directory Server enables the deployment of
extremely large directories with hundreds of millions of entries.
In fact, these deployments cannot be done in a safe and reliable
way without a component such as Virtual Directory Server's unique
partitioning feature, which is currently in use by several wireless
carriers around the world, supporting directories of up to 180
million entries with more than four thousand operations per
second.
Virtual Directory Server supports very large directories by
partitioning single large sub-trees over multiple servers. When
applications connect to Virtual Directory Server, they "see" the
entire directory in one piece, even though the information is
actually distributed over several individual directory servers,
also called "partitions".
This partitioning is necessary because of the following
reasons:
Safety/Reliability: If for any reason data
needs to be reloaded, it is much faster to reload data into
multiple smaller partitions than into one large directory.
Performance: Very large directories start to
"creak" after several million entries and do not scale well. In
order to guarantee good scalability and performance of the
directory infrastructure, it is advisable to chunk the data into
several smaller partitions.
"Virtual Directory Server is extremely scalable - hundreds
of millions of entries, massive throughput - with exceptional
performance."
Companies often face performance problems as soon as new
services are added that make heavy use of existing directory
infrastructure, or when existing services become popular. When high
volume traffic, i.e. a high number of requests hit the directories,
bottlenecks start developing and tend to aggravate the problem by
causing repercussions beyond the directory infrastructure. This can
cause a loss of revenue, disgruntled customers and/or employees as
well as a nightmare for administrators and IT directors.
Symlabs Virtual Directory Server is ideally suited to boost the
performance of existing directory infrastructures by using a unique
multi-pronged approach of several specially crafted algorithms that
offer load balancing between equal servers and connection
pooling.
Virtual Directory Server makes it easy to add customized
business logic to any LDAP transaction. Every operation type can be
intercepted, and conditions are evaluated based on where an access
is coming from, how a current connection is bound (authenticated),
and any other detail known about the current operation. An action
can then be taken, which is completely customizable using a simple
but powerful scripting language called DirectoryScript.
Using this customization mechanism, existing customers are using
Virtual Directory Server to implement business logic ranging from
special routing of requests to managing the recharge lifecycle of
prepaid mobile phone subscriptions.