Overview of HP Directory Services OSMS

Stack Components

The HP Directory Services OSMS stack consists of software packages from the following three sources:

Symas’ Connexitor Directory Services (CDS) software is a complete directory and authentication services package that is powered by the open source Open Source Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (OpenLDAP) project and is packaged for easy installation including all the dependent additional packages necessary for installation. CDS is compiled with support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL), and the Symas-developed high-performance back-bdb and back-hdb back ends, that are based on the Berkeley database (Berkely DB) package. CDS also includes a comprehensive set of modules which implement enterprise features, such as password policy management, referential integrity, and attribute uniqueness.

HP Directory Services OSMS stack includes the Symas CDS Gold Edition bundled components, a commercial open source software. Depending on the architecture used in the stack, Symas CDS uses different versions of the various packages, as displayed in Table 1.

	NOTE: The OpenLDAP and Berkely DB packages contain selected patches and enhancements.

The Apache mod_ldap and mod_authnz_ldap modules are community open source software from the RHEL5 distribution. To integrate the Apache HTTP server and CDS, the mod_authnz_ldap and mod_ldap connectors are used in the stack as part of the Apache HTTP server.

HP OpenView Operations (OVO) Gallery Smart Plug-Ins (SPI) is a proprietary software included in the HP Directory Services OSMS. The HP OVO Gallery SPI software can be found at:

http://h20229.www2.hp.com/products/spi

Hardware Environment

The software contained in the HP Directory Services OSMS stack are installed on HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers with locally attached SCSI or SATA disks. The hardware environment is described in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Hardware Environment

The diagram illustrates a basic configuration consisting of a master directory server and one or more replicas. The LDAP applications that are running on the Apache HTTP server, with the mod_ldap and mod_authnz_ldap modules enabled, are routed through a load balancer to a replica.

During a read operation, the replica returns the requested information. During a write operation, the replica returns a reference to the master server. Replicas are kept up to date with the master content using the LDAP Content Synchronization protocol through the syncrepl directive in the replica’s configuration. An additional Windows-based server is required to host HP OVO for manageability through the OpenLDAP SPI.