title: Simply Unreliable, or another Saturday lost to Sun DS link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/simply-unreliable-or-another-saturday-lost-to-sun-ds/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 627 created: 2007/09/30 01:12:57 created_gmt: 2007/09/30 01:12:57 comment_status: open post_name: simply-unreliable-or-another-saturday-lost-to-sun-ds status: publish post_type: post

Simply Unreliable, or another Saturday lost to Sun DS

For the second time in as many months I’ve had one of our Sun master directories go south on me. The details are unimportant. What is important is that this incident is giving me ever so much more incentive to get my company off a directory server product that has proved unreliable at the least opportune moments, with nary a warning before, or indication later of why.

Maybe it’s the aging “highly optimized” Berkely DB back-end. Maybe it’s some weird directory-killing bug in my company’s environment. Maybe it’s that there’s no one left at Sun (or contracted to Sun) who knows how to write in C (the core server product in written in C, onto which Sun has piled layers of Java code for new features). You have to wonder, though. After all, Sun apparently has thrown considerable resources at developing a pure Java DS to replace what is now called “Sun Java System Enterprise Directory”, or something like that.

[Note: Sun has been working for a couple of years on a completely new LDAP directory written in pure Java, which when done will probably result in the existing product becoming an orphan, leaving Red Hat as the only remaining purveyor of the Netscape line of directory servers. Of course, now that the Apache Project has beaten Sun to the punch, their plans may change.]

Sure, open source OpenLDAP flakes out too. Especially under load. But it’s alot easier, and faster, to restore an OpenLDAP directory than a Sun or (also Netscape-based) Red Hat Directory. How I wish I could get us onto OpenLDAP, but the time for that has passed. We’re on the road to deploying Oracle over the next couple of years, which isn’t so bad when you consider that chances are the DBA’s will get the call first.

Anyway, that’s the deal as far as I’m concerned. But then, maybe I’m just growing intolerant in my old age — or value the precious time I have with my kids on the weekend more.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo