Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)

• Creating a Plan for Putting Your Directory Service into Production

• Advice for Putting Your Directory Service into Production

• Executing Your Plan

• Putting Your Directory Service into Production Checklist

• Looking Ahead

Putting your directory service into production is a big step. It is what you have been working toward as you have developed an understanding of directory services and your own project's needs, created a detailed design, and performed a directory service pilot. Because you get only one chance to make a good first impression , it is important to execute well at this stage.

In conducting your pilot, you learned a lot about what is involved in rolling out and running a directory service. Here are some of the ways a production directory service is different from a pilot directory service:

• Expectations are dramatically higher . People expect a higher level of service, including good performance, minimal downtime, and absolutely no loss of data. To meet these expectations, you need to monitor your service and have staff on call to fix problems as soon as they are detected .

• The audience for your service is significantly larger . To the early adopters who made use of your pilot, you will add a large set of people who view computing services simply as tools to help them get their jobs done. These users demand an easy-to-use, well-documented, and well-supported service.

• The scope and scale of your service may expand greatly . In a typical pilot deployment, not all the servers and applications that you plan to use in your production service are online. In addition, production servers are often deployed on larger machines than pilot servers are, and the larger machines may require more care and feeding for backups and other maintenance tasks .

• Monitoring and troubleshooting responsibilities are increased . The people deploying the directory service have a greater responsibility to keep an eye on the service and to be available to fix problems. This is really a consequence of the increased expectations and larger audience for the service.

Throughout this chapter we assume that your directory service deployment is fairly large and complex. Therefore, we place a lot of emphasis on written plans and communication among the people participating in the production rollout. If your deployment is small, you can safely use less formal methods of communication. Whether it is large or small, you can win many supporters simply by providing a useful, reliable service and telling people about it right from the start.

The best way to achieve a successful production rollout is to start with a comprehensive plan. The first section of this chapter helps you create such a plan. After that we present some advice to help you succeed with your production deployment. We finish with a discussion on how to execute your plan successfully.