Very Large Directories Solutions - Symlabs

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.

Symlabs 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.

"Symlabs Virtual Directory Server is extremely scalable - hundreds of millions of entries, massive throughput - with exceptional performance."

Solution

High Volume Traffic

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.

Directory Customization for Complex Requirements

Symlabs 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.