New in OpenDS 2.0: Monitoring in the Control Panel

Opends2 PictoOpenDS 2.0 has just been released and there are several new and exciting features in it.

Today we will look at the new feature in the Control Panel: the monitoring aspect.

At first look when we compare the Control Panel for OpenDS 1.2 (on the left below) and the one for OpenDS 2.0 (on the right below), not much has changed. Except for the left bar menu that contains a new section: Monitoring and a status bar at the bottom of the panel.

OpenDS 1.2 Control PanelOpenDS 2.0 Control Panel

Let’s look a little more in details what kind of monitoring information for the OpenDS server is now available:

General Information.

OpenDS 2.0 General Monitoring PanelIn the General Information Panel, you will find overall statistics such Connections, Up Time, but also information related to the system like the name, OS, number of CPUs, available memory in the JVM. You will also have a screen dedicated to the Java VM specific information (see below) such as the version, the vendor, the running arguments, a lot of details about the various segments of memory of the VM. A third screen highlights the work load. The fourth one gives details about the entry cache and the fifth one gives details about the local backend database environment, i.e. low level statistics on memory, transactions, locks in the database. There are more than 50 parameters from the database that you can retrieve and look at with the “Show Operations…” button.

OpenDS 2.0 Monitoring Java VM

The Connection Handler.

The Monitoring Panel for the Connection Handler gives greater details about the LDAP operations that are processed by the server, sorted by kind of Connection: what goes on the LDAP port, what happens on the LDAPS port and the Administrative operations.

OpenDS Connection Monitoring

There are many more statistics information available from the OpenDS server, either through LDAP, JMX or SNMP if you have enabled the later two. Not everything can be displayed in the GUI, and in future version we will provide external tools or widget to graph some of the monitoring information. Meanwhile, play with the Monitoring screens of the OpenDS 2.0 Control Panel, and let us know what you think, what you like, what you feel is missing.

And for a supported version of OpenDS, please check Sun OpenDS Standard Edition 2.0

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OpenDS makes Java.net Headlines

Yes, the release of OpenDS 2.0 was a big news for all of us in the development team. But we’re really happy that the news is also big on Java.net.

Many thanks to the editors, and particularly to Marina Sum who keeps posting about the OpenDS to her blog, by passion and kindness.

Javanet20090720

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LDAP Tip : Counting the number of entries in a branch…

This is a general LDAP tip and it applies to OpenDS the open source LDAP directory service in Java, as well as Sun Directory Server (all versions) and other LDAP servers:

How can I know the number of entries under a specific node of the Directory Information Tree ?
Well it’s simple. Every entry contains an operational attribute that specify the number of immediate subordinates entry : numSubordinates.

So to retrieve the number of entries under a specific node of the DIT, for example in the ou=people,dc=example,dc=com, a simple read is required.

$ bin/ldapsearch -p 3389 -D "cn=directory manager" -w – -b "ou=people,dc=example,dc=com" -s base ‘(objectclass=*)’ numsubordinates

Password for user ‘cn=directory manager’:

dn: ou=People,dc=example,dc=com

numsubordinates: 21

This attribute is defined in an expired Internet-Draft but has been well implemented in many servers. There are often some limitations, like the value only counts entries on the same server, but overall it’s a very useful attribute especially when browsing through the DIT.

OpenDS and Sun Directory Server also implements another attribute : hasSubordinates, defined in X.501. hasSubordinates is a boolean and returns "true" or "false" depending on whether the entry is a branch or a leaf in the Directory Information Tree.

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