"The LDAP Guys."

LDAPCon 2009 Session

Storing LDAP Data in MySQL Cluster for OpenLDAP and OpenDS - Chu/Poitou

Submitted Materials

• Submitted Slides

Abstract

LDAP directories have been proven to scale to handle enormous volumes of data and transactions. However, the current high performance designs depend on having a very powerful single machine to achieve maximum scaling. Meanwhile, the trend in data centers has been to scale using clusters of small nodes that can be grown incrementally. Also, while deployment of LDAP directories has continued to expand into new application areas, these deployments have needed the directories to coexist with existing databases, rather than displace them. The success of these deployments depends on being able to leverage directory and database technologies without greatly increasing the overall administration overhead. Ideally the directories and databases must share data rather than maintaining separate duplicate copies of the data.

MySQL Cluster is a transactional database engine built specifically for cluster deployments. It supports concurrent access from multiple clients and automatically partitions data across multiple storage nodes. Using the low level Cluster APIs allows us to provide simultaneous access to data from both LDAP and MySQL with full consistency and high performance.

Of course nothing is so straightforward; there are fundamental differences between the relational table model used in MySQL and the hierarchical data model used in LDAP. In this talk we will describe the obstacles in interfacing an LDAP directory to a relational data store and how we adapted the data models to overcome these obstacles. The overall approach is shared by both the OpenLDAP and OpenDS implementations and details of each implementation will be covered, along with directions for future enhancements.

Bio

Howard Chu is the Chief Architect of OpenLDAP and CTO of Symas Corporation. Prior to founding Symas Corporation, Howard worked at the U. Michigan, JPL, Locus Computing, and platinum Technology in software development roles. Howard is a prolific contributor to the Open Source software community.

Ludovic Poitou is the OpenDS community manager and a directory services architect at Sun Microsystems. Ludo has been involved with directory services since 1991 and has been developing Sun's directory products since 1995. Mr Poitou is a regular presenter of LDAP, directory services, and OpenDS at JavaOne, Sun CEC, Jazoon, LDAPCon, and other key forums. He also actively contributed to the development of LDAP standards at IETF and participated in the Directory Interoperability Forum of The Open Group. Ludo blogs on the subject of LDAP and directory services on http:/blogs.sun.com/Ludo/.