Maintaining Novell eDirectory18537novdocx (en) 11 July 200818Maintaining Novell eDirectoryFor Novell ® eDirectoryTM to perform optimally, you need to maintain the directory through routinehealth check procedures and upgrading or replacing hardware when necessary.This chapter covers the following maintenance topics:Performance Section 18.1, “Improving eDirectory Performance,” on page 537 Section 18.2, “Improving eDirectory Performance on Linux, Solaris, and AIX Systems,” onpage 545 Section 18.4, “Advanced Referral Costing,” on page 551 Section 18.5, “Improving Bulkload Performance,” on page 560 Section 18.6, “Countering Memory Fragmentation,” on page 565Health Checks Section 18.7, “Keeping eDirectory Healthy,” on page 566 Section 18.8, “Resources for Monitoring,” on page 569Hardware Replacements Section 18.9, “Upgrading Hardware or Replacing a Server,” on page 569eDirectory Recovery Section 18.10, “Restoring eDirectory after a Hardware Failure,” on page 57618.1 Improving eDirectory PerformanceThe most significant setting that affects eDirectory performance is the cache. In earlier versions ofNDS ®, you could specify a block cache limit to regulate the amount of memory that the directoryused for the cache. The default was 8 MB RAM for cache.With eDirectory 8.5 or later, you can specify a block cache limit and an entry cache limit. The blockcache, available in earlier versions of NDS, caches only physical blocks from the database. Theentry cache, a feature introduced in eDirectory 8.5, caches logical entries from the database. Thecaching of entries reduces the processing time required to instantiate entries in memory from theblock cache.Although there is some redundancy between the two caches, each cache is designed to boostperformance for different operations. Block cache is most useful for update operations. Entry cacheis most useful for operations that browse the eDirectory tree by reading through entries, such asname resolution.Both block and entry caches are useful in improving query performance. Block cache speeds upindex searching. Entry cache speeds up the retrieval of entries referenced from an index.
