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Are you ready for eDirectory 8.8 SP2?

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27 July 2007 - 5:50am
Submitted by: jjaimon

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I'm very excited about the forthcoming release of eDirectory viz., eDirectory 8.8 SP2. While the focus of eDirectory 8.8 was to provide features that help you create secure applications, support packs of this series concentrate more on the performance and scalability aspects.  eDirectory 8.8 came with features such as:

  • Encrypted attributes
  • Encrypted replication
  • Case sensitive Universal Password enforcement in the LDAP layer
  • Priority Sync feature
  • Authentication to eDirectory over SASL-GSSAPI
  • Security container caching for improved UP policy management

eDirectory has a unique capability of maintaining referential integrity among objects.  This has been enhanced in 8.8 SP1 by maintaining the references in a local server at the database layer using an indexed attribute, thus improving the performance.  We also shipped ldif2dib utility which helps  you upload millions of objects directly to the database which reduces the time to staging significantly. 

Here comes 8.8 SP2 with a super charged engine.  Performance reports that I'm seeing make me realize that this is the fastest directory engine we have had so far.  We made changes in almost all levels starting from low level OS interfaces to database, agent and protocol engines.  This report is not available for public distribution yet. However, to get an idea, have look at the following sample data taken on SLES10-SP1.

  • Overall 15% improvement over previous versions of eDirectory
  • 30% improvement in adding new user objects
  • 12% improvement in user bind.
  • Over 120% improvement in search performance on a 64bit SLES10-SP1 platform.

And that's what I call engineering.  I'm waiting for this release. How about you?

 




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User Comments

nirdla's picture

NICE! hoping MS-AD will not

Submitted by nirdla (not verified) on 27 July 2007 - 10:06am.

NICE! hoping MS-AD will not catch up..and more applications to leverage it.. {;)

Eric's picture

Hmmm, Good question. We're

Submitted by Eric (not verified) on 27 July 2007 - 10:27am.

Hmmm, Good question. We're still on 8.7 because we do a lot of Netware-to-Netware migrations and, ridiculously, there is still no utility to support 8.8. Is there finally going to be a Netware-to-Netware migration utility for servers running 8.8? We've been waiting since the 8.8 beta in late-2004...

sysadmin1138's picture

That looks spiffy! We're on

Submitted by sysadmin1138 (not verified) on 27 July 2007 - 11:57am.

That looks spiffy! We're on 8.7.3 still, though OES2 is making the move to eDir 8.8 a little more pressing. As we add more and more ldap-dependant applications that also do user binds, improved bind performance matters. So far the lag in bind times is hidden in normal web-page load times, but any improvement helps. Also, case sensitive passwords on LDAP will be very nifty.

The 64-bit performance numbers have me drooling, but then I'm a performance junkie ;)

Mickey's picture

I have ZENworks Server

Submitted by Mickey (not verified) on 28 July 2007 - 9:10am.

I have ZENworks Server Management. I saw a persentation at Brainshare on how to automate the install and/or uprgade of 8.8. When will the Software package be made available?

Jaimon Jose's picture

Unfortunately, we still

Submitted by Jaimon Jose (not verified) on 28 July 2007 - 8:12pm.

Unfortunately, we still don't have one. OES2 comes with a Netware to OES2 migration tool though. I know that the services migration is what we are concerned about. eDirectory migration can be as simple as placing a new replica and removing the old one.

Lisa Diaz's picture

Will every feature for 8.8

Submitted by Lisa Diaz (not verified) on 29 July 2007 - 2:02pm.

Will every feature for 8.8 sp2 be available on Netware as well as Linux?

Selva's picture

The presentation at

Submitted by Selva (not verified) on 29 July 2007 - 9:52pm.

The presentation at BrainShare covered automated Install/Upgrade of eDirectory 8.8 SP1/SP2 in Windows and NetWare platforms.
For Windows, the compiled software packages (CPKs) are available at:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/assets/edir-ex...
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/assets/edir-ne...
One each for automation with/without the Windows Client respectively. These are not bundled with the releases due to the huge size.
You can find more help on configuring every parameter from these two links:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/17736....
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/18310....

For NetWare,
the server software package (SPK) is bundled with the release. You can find the eDir88x.spk inside the nw folder once you extract the release files.

Selva's picture

The SCMT (Server

Submitted by Selva (not verified) on 29 July 2007 - 10:04pm.

The SCMT (Server Consolidation and Migration Toolkit) tool can be used to perform eDirectory migration from NetWare-to-NetWare. Currently the source eDirectory has to be updated to the latest SP (8.7.3 SP9) which could be migrated to eDirectory 8.8 SP2.
The SCMT is available at: http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=fxmzE0...

Eric's picture

According to

Submitted by Eric (not verified) on 30 July 2007 - 7:35am.

According to this,
http://www.novell.com/documentation/scmt/scmt11/da...
... way at the bottom, under user comments, it states "does not support eDirectory 8.8". Do you maybe mean, that there will be a new SCMT upon eDir 8.8sp2 release?

Jeff May's picture

A little off-topic, but this

Submitted by Jeff May (not verified) on 6 August 2007 - 5:37pm.

A little off-topic, but this is the "identity" area.

Where can one purchase certification prep software for IDM? It used to be that STS and Boson (and certify.com before they went under) had a lot of Novell cert prep software.

Very hard to find now.

Anyone?

Martin Irwin's picture

Selva, These CPKs/ZIPs only

Submitted by Martin Irwin (not verified) on 10 August 2007 - 10:24am.

Selva,
These CPKs/ZIPs only contain earlier builds of eDirectory not the latest one. I just downloaded and made sure.

Selva's picture

Since 8.8 version,

Submitted by Selva (not verified) on 14 August 2007 - 12:17am.

Since 8.8 version, eDirectory supported Encrypted Attributes which closely relates the DIB and NICI. So migrating from pre-8.8 versions to 8.8.x requires handling of these dependencies which had some issues.

These issues are fixed in eDirectory 8.8 SP2. So now you should be able to migrate from 8.7.3 SP9/8.8/8.8 SP1 to eDirectory 8.8 SP2

Selva's picture

Thanks for the update

Submitted by Selva (not verified) on 14 August 2007 - 12:22am.

Thanks for the update Martin. I'll update this site with the final CPK once we have the eDirectory 8.8 SP2 GMC delivered.
Mickey,
We avoided bundling the compiled software packages along with eDirectory release due to size restrictions. Hence we follow the pattern of delivering the SPKs and allowing the customers to compile the CPKs on their need. If you could compile the CPK in your environment, you could very well take the SPKs from the eDirectory release. Else we will arrange for the final CPK to be updated in this site as soon as the eDirectory 8.8 SP2 is released.

Martin IRwin's picture

Hi Selva! Thanx for the

Submitted by Martin IRwin (not verified) on 16 August 2007 - 7:57am.

Hi Selva!

Thanx for the update man!. Good to chat. Missing working with you!

Martin

Mike Jones's picture

Just like me - ask specific

Submitted by Mike Jones (not verified) on 24 September 2007 - 10:59am.

Just like me - ask specific questions that would help Novell get their products in the door and they get totally ignored. Wow!

NOVELL: Cool Blogs » Blog Archive » Nested Groups support in's picture

[...] my last blog, I

Submitted by NOVELL: Cool Blogs » Blog Archive » Nested Groups support in (not verified) on 28 October 2007 - 10:33am.

[...] my last blog, I talked about the performance improvements in eDirectory 8.8 SP2.  I am going to talk [...]

Henk's picture

Hello Selva, Martin, i just

Submitted by Henk (not verified) on 14 December 2007 - 5:40am.

Hello Selva, Martin,

i just have download the eDir88x.SPK, after i change a few variables through C1 136f, i Compiled this.
but this went wrong, with the error : Due to some exceptions, the software package compilation failed.
what can here be the problem?

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