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ForgeRock Directory Services 7.2 has been released

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ForgeRock Directory Services 7.2 was and will be the last release of ForgeRock products that I’ve managed. It was finished when I left the company and was released to the public a few days after. Before I dive into the changes available in this release, I’d like to thank the amazing team that produced this version, from the whole Engineering team led by Matt Swift, to the Quality engineering led by Carole Forel, the best and only technical writer Mark Craig, and also our sustaining engineer Chris Ridd who contributed some important fixes to existing customers. You all rock and I’ve really appreciated working with you all these years.

So what’s new and exciting in DS 7.2?

First, this version introduces a new type of index: Big Index. This type of index is to be used to optimize search queries that are expecting to return a large number of results among an even much larger number of entries. For example, if you have an application that searches for all users in the USA that live in a specific state. In a population of hundreds of millions users, you may have millions that live in one particular state (let’s say Ohio). With previous versions, searching for all users in Ohio would be unindexed and the search if allowed would scan the whole directory data to identify the ones in Ohio. With 7.2, the state attribute can be indexed as a Big Index, and the same search query would be considered as indexed, only going through the reduced set of users with that have Ohio as the value for the state attribute.

Big Indexes can have a lesser impact on write performances than regular indexes, but they tend to have a higher on disk footprint. As usual, choosing to use a Big Index type is a matter of trade-of between read and write performances, but also disk space occupation which may also have some impact on performances. It is recommended to test and run benchmarks in development or pre-production environments before using them in production.

The second significant new feature in 7.2 is the support of the HAProxy Protocol for LDAP and LDAPS. When ForgeRock Directory Services is deployed behind a software load-balancer such as HAProxy, NGINX or Kubernetes Ingress, it’s not possible for DS to know the IP address of the Client application (the only IP address known is the one of the load-balancer), therefore, it is not possible to enforce specific access controls or limits based on the applications. By supporting the HAProxy Protocol, DS can decode a specific header sent by the load-balancer and retrieve some information about the client application such as IP address but also some TLS related information if the connection between the client and the load-balancer is secured by TLS, and DS can use this information in access controls, logging, limits… You can find more details about DS support of the Proxy Protocol in DS documentation.

In DS 7.2, we have added a new option for securing and hashing passwords: Argon2. When enabled (which is the default), this allows importing users with Argon2 hashed passwords, and letting them authenticating immediately. Argon2 may be selected as well as the default scheme for hashing new passwords, by associating it with a password policy (such as the default password policy). The Argon2 password scheme has several parameters that control the cost of the hash: version, number of iterations, amount of memory to use and parallelism (aka number of threads used). While Argon2 is probably today the best algorithm to secure passwords, it can have a very big impact on the server’s performance, depending on the Argon2 parameters selected. Remember that DS encrypts the entries on disk by default, and therefore the risk of exposing hashed passwords at rest is extremely low (if not null).

Also new is the ability to search for attributes with a DistinguishedName syntax using pattern matching. DS 7.2 introduces a new matching rule named distinguishedNamePatternMatch (defined with the OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.4.13). It can be used to search for users with a specific manager for example with the following filter “(manager:1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.4.13:=uid=trigden,**)” or a more human readable form “(manager:distinguishedNamePatternMatch:=uid=trigden,**)”, or to search for users whose manager is part of the Admins organisational unit with the following filter “(manager:1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.4.13:=*,ou=Admins,dc=example,dc=com)”.

ForgeRock Directory Services 7.2 includes several minor improvements:

As with every release, there has been several performances optimizations and improvements, many minor issues corrected.

You can find the full details of the changes in the Release Notes.

I hope you will enjoy this latest release of ForgeRock Directory Services. If not, don’t reach out to me, I’m no longer in charge. 😀

DDOS Attacks leveraging LDAP !

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21382575392_223304551e_z
photo by Christiaan Colen

Yesterday, DDoS mitigation provider Corero Network Security disclosed a zero-day distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) technique, observed in the wild, that is capable of amplifying malicious traffic by a factor of as much as 55x. Several sites published the story as “Attackers are now abusing exposed LDAP servers to amplify DDoS attacks”.

 

According to Corero, the attacks exploited the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), but reading the details of the press release, it appears that the attackers were using Connectionless LDAP services (CLDAP) .

In this case, the attacker sends a simple query to a vulnerable reflector supporting the Connectionless LDAP service (CLDAP) and using address spoofing makes it appear to originate from the intended victim. The CLDAP service responds to the spoofed address, sending unwanted network traffic to the attacker’s intended target.

Connectionless LDAP  is a very old technical specification, published in 1995 as RFC 1798.  In 2003, this specification was obsoleted by RFC 3352 and moved to historical status. One of the main reason for obsoleting the proposed standard was its insufficient security capabilities.

OpenDJ, the open source LDAP Directory Services in Java, has never supported CLDAP and thus cannot be used in such attack. So, if you are a  ForgeRock customer, you should not worry about this kind of attack. But if you’re running a legacy product, that has CLDAP enabled by default, it is probably time to think about moving to a more recent and up to date directory service, such as OpenDJ.

 

More about OpenDJ support for JSON attribute values

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In a previous post, I introduced the new JSON syntax, JSON query and matching rules that are delivered as part of the OpenDJ LDAP directory server. Today, I will give more insights on how to customise the syntax, tune the matching rules for smarter and more efficient indexing, and I will highlight some best practices with using the JSON syntax.

JSON Syntax Validation

When defining an attribute with a JSON syntax, the server will validate that the JSON value is compliant with JSON RFC.  OpenDJ offers a few options to relax some of the constraints of a valid JSON. To change the settings of the syntax, you must use dsconfig --advanced.

>>>> Configure the properties of the Core Schema

Property Value(s)
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 1) allow-attribute-types-with-no-sup-or-syntax true
 2) allow-zero-length-values-directory-string false
 3) disabled-matching-rule NONE
 4) disabled-syntax NONE
 5) enabled true
 6) java-class org.opends.server.schema.CoreSchemaProvider
 7) json-validation-policy strict
 8) strict-format-certificates true
 9) strict-format-country-string true
 10) strict-format-jpeg-photos false
 11) strict-format-telephone-numbers false
 12) strip-syntax-min-upper-bound-attribute-type-description false

?) help
 f) finish - apply any changes to the Core Schema
 c) cancel
 q) quit

Enter choice [f]: 7


>>>> Configuring the "json-validation-policy" property

Specifies the policy that will be used when validating JSON syntax values.

Do you want to modify the "json-validation-policy" property?

1) Keep the default value: strict
 2) Change it to the value: disabled
 3) Change it to the value: lenient

?) help
 q) quit

Enter choice [1]:

Strict is the default mode.

Disabled means that the server will not try to validate the content of a JSON value.

Lenient means that it will validate the JSON value, but tolerate comments, single quotes and unquoted control characters.

JSON Matching Rule and Indexing

Like any attribute in the OpenDJ server, attributes with a JSON syntax can be indexed.

$ dsconfig -h localhost -p 4444 \
  -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w secret12 -X -n \
 set-backend-index-prop \--backend-name userRoot \
 --index-name json --set index-type:equality

By default, the server actually indexes each field of all JSON values. If the values are large and complex, indexing will  result in many disk I/O, possibly impacting performances for write operations.

If you know which fields of the JSON values will be queried for by the client applications, you can optimise the index and specify the JSON fields that are indexed. This is by creating a new custom schema provider for the JSON query. You can choose to overwrite the default JSON query matching rules (as illustrated below), and this will affect all JSON attributes, or you can choose to create a new rule (with a new name and OID).

In the example below, the custom schema provider overwrites the default caseIgnoreJsonQueryMatch, and only indexes the JSON fields _id and name with its subfields.

$ dsconfig -h localhost -p 4444 \
  -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w secret12 -X -n \
 create-schema-provider --provider-name "Json Schema" \
 --type json-schema --set enabled:true \
 --set case-sensitive-strings:false \
 --set ignore-white-space:true \
 --set matching-rule-name:caseIgnoreJsonQueryMatch \
 --set matching-rule-oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.4.1 \
 --set indexed-field:_id \
 --set "indexed-field:name/**"

When you overwrite the default matching rule, or you define a new one, you need to rebuild the indexes for all attributes that are making use of it.

Best Practices

The support for JSON attributes in OpenDJ is very new, but yet, we can recommend how to best use them.

The first thing, is to use the JSON syntax for attributes that are single valued. Indexing is designed to associate values with entries. Because JSON query indexes are built for all fields of the JSON objects, an entry will be returned if a query matches all fields, even though they are in different objects.

The JSON syntax is handy to store complex JSON objects in a single attribute and query them, through any field. However, the larger the values, the  more impact on the directory server’s performances. As, by default, all JSON fields are indexed, the more fields, the more expensive will be indexing. Also, because the JSON objects are LDAP attributes, the only way to change a value is to replace the value with a new one (or delete the value and add a new one, which are operations with even more bytes). There is no patch operation on the value. Finally, OpenDJ stores all attributes of an entry in a single database record. So any change in the entry itself will require to write the whole entry again.

As we’ve seen above, OpenDJ proposes a way to customise the JSON queries and the JSON fields that are indexed. We suggest that you make use of this capability and optimise the indexing of JSON objects for the queries run by the client applications.

If you plan to store different kinds of JSON objects in an OpenDJ directory service, define different attributes with the JSON syntax, and use a custom JSON query per attribute. For example, lets assume you will have entries that are persons with an address attribute with a JSON syntax, and some other entries that represent OAuth2 tokens, and the token main attribute has a JSON syntax. You should define an address attribute and a token attribute, both with the JSON syntax, but their specific matching rules, like below.

attributeTypes: ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.1.999 NAME 'address'
  SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.3.1
  EQUALITY caseIgnoreJsonAddressQueryMatch SINGLE-VALUE )

attributeTypes: ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.1.999 NAME 'token'
  SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.3.1 
  EQUALITY caseIgnoreJsonTokenQueryMatch SINGLE-VALUE )

where the matching rules are defined as such:

$ dsconfig -h localhost -p 4444 \
  -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w secret12 -X -n \
 create-schema-provider \
 --provider-name "Address Json Schema" \
 --type json-schema --set enabled:true \
 --set case-sensitive-strings:false \
 --set ignore-white-space:true \
 --set matching-rule-name:caseIgnoreJsonAddressQueryMatch \
 --set matching-rule-oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.4.998

and

$ dsconfig -h localhost -p 4444 \
  -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w secret12 -X -n \
 create-schema-provider \
 --provider-name "Token Json Schema" \
 --type json-schema --set enabled:true \
 --set case-sensitive-strings:false \
 --set ignore-white-space:true \
 --set matching-rule-name:caseIgnoreJsonTokenQueryMatch \
 --set matching-rule-oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.4.999 \
 --set indexed-field:token_type \
 --set indexed-field:expires_at \
 --set indexed-field:access_token

Note that there is an issue with OpenDJ 4.0.0-SNAPSHOTS (nightly builds) and when you define a new Schema Provider, you need to restart the server to have it be effective.

Storing JSON objects in LDAP attributes…

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jsonUntil recently, the only way to store a JSON object to an LDAP directory server, was to store it as string (either a Directory String i.e a sequence of UTF-8 characters, or an Octet String i.e. a blob of octets).

But now, in OpenDJ, the Open source LDAP Directory services in Java, there is now support for new syntaxes : one for JSON objects and one for JSON Query. Associated with the JSON query, a couple of matching rules, that can be easily customised and extended, have been defined.

To use the syntax and matching rules, you should first extend the LDAP schema with one or more new attributes, and use these attributes in object classes. For example :

dn: cn=schema
objectClass: top
objectClass: ldapSubentry
objectClass: subschema
attributeTypes: ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.1.999 NAME 'json'
SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.3.1 EQUALITY caseIgnoreJsonQueryMatch SINGLE-VALUE )
objectClasses: (1.3.6.1.4.1.36733.2.1.2.999 NAME 'jsonObject'
SUP top MUST (cn $ json ) )

Just copy the LDIF above into config/schema/95-json.ldif, and restart the OpenDJ server. Make sure you use your own OIDs when defining schema elements. The ones above are samples and should not be used in production.

Then, you can add entries in the OpenDJ directory server like this:

$ ldapmodify -a -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -h localhost -p 1389

dn: cn=bjensen,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: jsonObject
cn: bjensen
json: { "_id":"bjensen", "_rev":"123", "name": { "first": "Babs", "surname": "Jensen" }, "age": 25, "roles": [ "sales", "admin" ] }

dn: cn=scarter,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: jsonObject
cn: scarter
json: { "_id":"scarter", "_rev":"456", "name": { "first": "Sam", "surname": "Carter" }, "age": 48, "roles": [ "manager", "eng" ] }

The very nice thing about the JSON syntax and matching rules, is that OpenDJ understands how the values of the json attribute are structured, and it becomes possible to make specific queries, using the JSON Query syntax.

Let’s search for all jsonObjects that have a json value with a specific _id :

$ ldapsearch -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -h localhost -p 1389 -b "dc=example,dc=com" -s sub "(json=_id eq 'scarter')"

dn: cn=scarter,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: jsonObject
json: { "_id":"scarter", "_rev":"456", "name": { "first": "Sam", "surname": "Carter" }, "age": 48, "roles": [ "manager", "eng" ] }
cn: scarter

We can run more complex queries, still using the JSON Query Syntax:

$ ldapsearch -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -h localhost -p 1389 -b "dc=example,dc=com" -s sub "(json=name/first sw 'b' and age lt 30)"

dn: cn=bjensen,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: jsonObject
json: { "_id":"bjensen", "_rev":"123", "name": { "first": "Babs", "surname": "Jensen" }, "age": 25, "roles": [ "sales", "admin" ] }
cn: bjensen

For a complete description of the query  filter expressions, please refer to ForgeRock Common  REST (CREST) Query Filter documentation.

The JSON matching rule supports indexing which can be enabled using dsconfig against the appropriate attribute index. By default all JSON fields of the attribute are indexed.

In a followup post, I will give more advanced configuration of the JSON Syntax, detail how to customise the matching rule to index only specific JSON fields, and will outline some best practices with the JSON syntax and attributes.

OpenDJ: Monitoring Unindexed Searches…

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FR_plogo_org_FC_openDJ-300x86OpenDJ, the open source LDAP directory services, makes use of indexes to optimise search queries. When a search query doesn’t match any index, the server will cursor through the whole database to return the entries, if any, that match the search filter. These unindexed queries can require a lot of resources : I/Os, CPU… In order to reduce the resource consumption, OpenDJ rejects unindexed queries by default, except for the Root DNs (i.e. for cn=Directory Manager).

In previous articles, I’ve talked about privileges for administratives accounts, and also about Analyzing Search Filters and Indexes.

Today, I’m going to show you how to monitor for unindexed searches by keeping a dedicated log file, using the traditional access logger and filtering criteria.

First, we’re going to create a new access logger, named “Searches” that will write its messages under “logs/search”.

dsconfig -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -h localhost -p 4444 -n -X \
    create-log-publisher \
    --set enabled:true \
    --set log-file:logs/search \
    --set filtering-policy:inclusive \
    --set log-format:combined \
    --type file-based-access \
    --publisher-name Searches

Then we’re defining a Filtering Criteria, that will restrict what is being logged in that file: Let’s log only “search” operations, that are marked as “unindexed” and take more than “5000” milliseconds.

dsconfig -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -h localhost -p 4444 -n -X \
    create-access-log-filtering-criteria \
    --publisher-name Searches \
    --set log-record-type:search \
    --set search-response-is-indexed:false \
    --set response-etime-greater-than:5000 \
    --type generic \
    --criteria-name Expensive\ Searches

Voila! Now, whenever a search request is unindexed and take more than 5 seconds, the server will log the request to logs/search (in a single line) as below :

$ tail logs/search
[12/Sep/2016:14:25:31 +0200] SEARCH conn=10 op=1 msgID=2 base="dc=example,
dc=com" scope=sub filter="(objectclass=*)" attrs="+,*" result=0 nentries=
10003 unindexed etime=6542

This file can be monitored and used to trigger alerts to administrators, or simply used to collect and analyse the filters that result into unindexed requests, in order to better tune the OpenDJ indexes.

Note that sometimes, it is a good option to leave some requests unindexed (the cost of indexing them outweighs the benefits of the index). If these requests are unfrequent, run by specific administrators for reporting reasons, and if the results are expecting to contain a lot of entries. If so, a best practice is to have a dedicated replica for administration and run these expensive requests. Also, it is better if the client applications are tuned to expect these requests to take a long time.

Data Confidentiality with OpenDJ LDAP Directory Services

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FR_plogo_org_FC_openDJ-300x86Directory Servers have been used and continue to be used to store and retrieve identity information, including some data that is sensitive and should be protected. OpenDJ LDAP Directory Services, like many directory servers, has an extensive set of features to protect the data, from securing network connections and communications, authenticating users, to access controls and privileges… However, in the last few years, the way LDAP directory services have been deployed and managed has changed significantly, as they are moving to the “Cloud”. Already many of ForgeRock customers are deploying OpenDJ servers on Amazon or MS Azure, and the requirements for data confidentiality are increasing, especially as the file system and disk management are no longer under their control. For that reason, we’ve recently introduced a new feature in OpenDJ, giving the ability to administrators to encrypt all or part of the directory data before writing to disk.clouddataprotection

The OpenDJ Data Confidentiality feature can be enabled on a per database backend basis to encrypt LDAP entries before being stored to disk. Optionally, indexes can also be protected, individually. An administrator may chose to protect all indexes, or only a few of them, those that contain data that should remain confidential, like cn (common name), sn (surname)… Additionally, the confidentiality of the replication logs can be enabled, and then it’s enabled for all changes of all database backends. Note that if data confidentiality is enabled on an equality index, this index can no longer be used for ordering, and thus for initial substring nor sorted requests.

Example of command to enable data confidentiality for the userRoot backend:

dsconfig set-backend-prop \
 -h opendj.example.com -p 4444 \
 -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w secret12 -n -X \
 --backend-name userRoot --set confidentiality-enabled:true

Data confidentiality is a dynamic feature, and can be enabled, disabled without stopping the server. When enabling on a backend, only the updated or created entries will be encrypted. If there is existing data that need confidentiality, it is better to export and reimport the data. With indexes data confidentiality, the behaviour is different. When changing the data confidentiality on an index, you must rebuild the index before it can be used with search requests.

Key Management - Photo adapted from https://www.flickr.com/people/ecossystems/

When enabling data confidentiality, you can select the cipher algorithm and the key length, and again this can be per database backend. The encryption key itself is generated on the server itself and securely distributed to all replicated servers through the replication of the Admin Backend (“cn=admin data”), and thus it’s never exposed to any administrator. Should a key get compromised, we provide a way to mark it so and generate a new key. Also, a backup of an encrypted database backend can be restored on any server with the same configuration, as long as the server still has its configuration and its Admin backend intact. Restoring such backend backup to fresh new server requires that it’s configured for replication first.

The Data Confidentiality feature can be tested with the OpenDJ nightly builds. It is also available to ForgeRock customers as part of our latest update of the ForgeRock Identity Platform.

Migrating from SunDSEE to OpenDJ

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Sun DSEE 7.0 DVDAs the legacy Sun product has reached its end of life, many companies are looking at migrating from Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition [SunDSEE] to ForgeRock Directory Services, built on the OpenDJ project.

Several of our existing customers have already done this migration, whether in house or with the help of partners. Some even did the migration in 2 weeks. In every case, the migration was smooth and easy. Regularly, I’m asked if we have a detailed migration guide and if we can recommend tools to keep the 2 services running side by side, synchronized, until all apps are moved to the ForgeRock Directory Services deployment.

My colleague Wajih, long time directory expert, has just published an article on ForgeRock.org wikis that described in details how to do DSEE to OpenDJ system to system synchronization using ForgeRock Identity Management product.

If you are planning a migration, check it out. It is that simple !

 

Updates:

  • Update on June 8th to add link to A Global Bank case study.

OpenDJ LDAP Directory Services update

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FR_plogo_org_FC_openDJ-300x86The new version of ForgeRock Directory Services, based on OpenDJ 3.0, was released in January and I’ve already written about the new features here, here and here.

We’ve now started the development of the next releases. We’ve updated the high level roadmap on our wiki, to give you an idea of what’s coming.

The last few weeks have been very active, as you can see on our JIRA dashboard.

Screen Shot 2016-03-18 at 10.56.12

There are already a few new features and enhancements in the master branch of our GIT repository :

A Bcrypt password storage scheme. The new scheme is meant to help migration of user accounts from other systems, without requiring a password reset. Bcrypt also provide a much stronger level of security for hashing passwords, as it’s number of iteration is configurable. But since OpenDJ 2.6, we are already providing a PBKDF2 password storage scheme which is recommended over Bcrypt by OWASP, for securing passwords.

Some enhancements of our performance testing tools, part of the OpenDJ LDAP Toolkit. All xxxxrate tools have a new way of computing statistics, providing more reliable and consistent results while reducing the overhead of producing them.

Some performance enhancements in various areas, including replication, group management, overall requests processing…

If you want to see it by yourself, you can checkout the code from our GIT repository, and build it, or you can grab the latest nightly build.

Play with OpenDJ and let us know how it works for you.

What’s new in OpenDJ 3.0, Part III

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FR_plogo_org_FC_openDJ-300x86In the previous posts, I talked about the new PDB Backend in OpenDJ 3.0, and the other changes with backends, replication and the changelog.

In this last article about OpenDJ 3.0, I’m presenting the most important new features and enhancements in this major release:

Certificate Matching Rules.

OpenDJ now implements the CertificateExactMatch matching rule in compliance with “Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Schema Definitions for X.509 Certificates” (RFC 4523) and implements the schema and the syntax for certificates, certificate lists  and certificate pairs.

It’s now possible to search a directory to find an entry with a specific certificate, using a filter such as below:

(userCertificate={ serialNumber 13233831500277100508, issuer rdnSequence:"CN=Babs Jensen,OU=Product Development,L=Cupertino,C=US" })

Password Storage Schemes

The PKCS5S2 Password Storage Scheme has been added to the list of supported storage schemes. While this one is less secure and flexible than PBKDF2, it allows some of our customers to migrate from systems that use the PKCS5S2 algorithm. Other password storage schemes have been enhanced to support arbitrary salt length and thus helping with other migrations (without requiring all users to have a new password).

Disk Space Monitoring.

In previous releases, each backend had a disk space monitoring function, regardless of the filesystems or disks used. In OpenDJ 3.0, we’ve created a disk space monitoring service, and backends, replication, log services register to it. This allows the server to optimise its resource consumption to monitor, as well as ensuring that all disks that contain writable data are monitored, and alerts raised when reaching some low threshold.

Improvements

There are many improvements in many areas of the server: in the REST to LDAP services and gateway, optimisations on indexes, dsconfig batch mode, DSML Gateway supporting SOAP 1.2, native packages… For the complete details, please read the Release Notes.

As always, the best way to really see and feel the difference is by downloading and installing the OpenDJ server, and playing with it. We’re providing a Zip installation, an RPM and a Debian Package, the DSML Gateway and the REST to LDAP Gateway as war files.

Over the course of the development of OpenDJ 3.0, we’ve received many contributions, in form of code, issues raised in our JIRA, documentation… We address our deepest thanks to all the contributors and developers :

Andrea Stani, Auke Schrijnen, Ayami Tyndal, Brad Tumy, Bruno Lavit, Bernhard Thalmayr, Carole Forel, Chris Clifton, Chris Drake, Chris Ridd, Christian Ohr, Christophe Sovant, Cyril Grosjean, Darin Perusich, David Goldsmith, Dennis Demarco, Edan Idzerda, Emidio Stani, Fabio Pistolesi, Gaétan Boismal, Gary Williams, Gene Hirayama, Hakon Steinø, Ian Packer, Jaak Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, James Phillpotts, Jeff Blaine, Jean-Noël Rouvignac, Jens Elkner, Jonathan Thomas, Kevin Fahy, Lana Frost, Lee Trujillo, Li Run, Ludovic Poitou, Manuel Gaupp, Mark Craig, Mark De Reeper, Markus Schulz, Matthew Swift, Matt Miller, Muzzol Oliba, Nicolas Capponi, Nicolas Labrot, Ondrej Fuchsik, Patrick Diligent, Peter Major, Quentin Cassel, Richard Kolb, Robert Wapshott, Sébastien Bertholet, Shariq Faruqi, Stein Myrseth, Sunil Raju, Tomasz JÄ™drzejewski, Travis Papp, Tsoi Hong, Violette Roche-Montané, Wajih Ahmed, Warren Strange, Yannick Lecaillez. (I’m sorry if I missed anyone…)

What’s new in OpenDJ 3.0 – Part II

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FR_plogo_org_FC_openDJ-300x86Yesterday, I’ve talked about the most important change in OpenDJ 3.0, that is the new PDB Backend. Let me detail other new and improved features of OpenDJ 3.0, still related to backends and replication.

As part of the work for the new backend, we’ve worked on the import process, in order to make it more I/O efficient and thus faster.

Here’s some numbers, importing 1 000 000 users in OpenDJ.

In OpenDJ 2.6.3:

$ import-ldif -l ../1M.ldif -n userRoot
[03/Feb/2016:15:41:42 +0100] category=RUNTIME_INFORMATION severity=NOTICE msgID=20381717 msg=Installation Directory: /Space/Tests/Blog/2.6/opendj
...
[03/Feb/2016:15:42:54 +0100] category=JEB severity=NOTICE msgID=8847454 msg=Processed 1000002 entries, imported 1000002, skipped 0, rejected 0 and migrated 0 in 71 seconds (average rate 13952.5/sec)

In OpenDJ 3.0, with the JE Backend:

$ import-ldif -l ../../1M.ldif -n userRoot
[03/02/2016:15:45:19 +0100] category=UTIL seq=0 severity=INFO msg=Installation Directory: /Space/Tests/Blog/3.0/opendj
...
[03/02/2016:15:46:22 +0100] category=PLUGGABLE seq=74 severity=INFO msg=Processed 1000002 entries, imported 1000002, skipped 0, rejected 0 and migrated 0 in 62 seconds (average rate 15961.2/sec)

In OpenDJ 3.0, with the PDB Backend

$ import-ldif -l ../../1M.ldif -n userRoot
[03/02/2016:15:59:38 +0100] category=UTIL seq=0 severity=INFO msg=Installation Directory: /Space/Tests/Blog/3.0/opendj
...
[03/02/2016:16:00:38 +0100] category=PLUGGABLE seq=48 severity=INFO msg=Processed 1000002 entries, imported 1000002, skipped 0, rejected 0 and migrated 0 in 58 seconds (average rate 17038.7/sec)

We’ve also completely reworked the storage layer for the replication changes, moving away from the BDB JE database. Instead, we’re using direct files, again providing much smaller disk occupancy (and thus optimising I/Os) but also allowing much more efficient purging of old data.

As part of these changes, we’ve made serious improvements to the way the replication changes can be read and searched using LDAP under the “cn=Changelog” suffix. More importantly, we’ve now have a way to ensure a complete ordering of the changes published, and thus consistency of their “changeNumbers”. That is to say that now, when reading “cn=Changelog” on different replicated servers, the change with “ChangeNumber=N” will be the same on all servers, allowing applications that read these changes to failover from one server to another. We’ve added a way to resynchronise these ChangeNumbers when adding a new replica to an existing topology, or when restoring one after a maintenance period.

Still on the subject of the ChangeLog, we’ve added another level of security to it, by introducing a “changelog-read” privilege that provides a better control on which applications and users are allowed to read the data from the “cn=Changelog” suffix.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow, I will continue with all the other new features and enhancements in OpenDJ 3.0.

If you have done it yet, you can download OpenDJ 3.0 from ForgeRock’s BackStage and start playing with it. And check the Release Notes for more information.

OpenDJ 3.0.0 has been released…

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FR_plogo_org_FC_openDJ-300x86As part of the release of the ForgeRock Identity Platform that we did last week, we’ve released a major version of our Directory Services product : OpenDJ 3.0.0.

The main and most important change in OpenDJ 3.0 is the work on the backend layer, with the introduction of a new backend database, supported by a new low level key-value store. When installing a new instance of OpenDJ, administrators now have the choice of creating a JE Backend (which is based on Berkeley DB Java Edition, as with previous releases of OpenDJ), or a PDB Backend (which is based on the new PersistIt library). When upgrading, the existing local backends will be transparently upgraded in JE Backends, but indexes will need to be rebuilt (and can be rebuilt automatically during the upgrade process).

Both backends have the same capabilities, and very similar performances. Most importantly, both backends benefit from a number of improvements compared with previous releases : the size of databases and index records are smaller, some indexes have been reworked to deliver better performances both for updates and reads. Overall, we’ve been increasing the throughput of Adding/Deleting entries in OpenDJ by more than 15 %.

But the 2 backends are different, especially in the way they deal with database compression. Because of the way it’s dealing with journals and compression, the new PDB backend may deliver better overall throughput, but may increase its disk occupancy significantly under heavy load (it favours updates over compression). Once the throughput is reduced under a certain threshold, compression will be highly effective and the overall disk occupancy will be optimised.

A question I often get is “Which backend should I use? “. And I don’t have a definitive answer. If you have an OpenDJ instance and you’re upgrading to 3.0, keep the JE Backend. This is a simple and automated upgrade. If you’re installing a new instance of OpenDJ, then I would say it’s a matter of risks. We don’t have the same wide experience with the PDB backend than we have had with the JE backend over the last 10 years. So, if you want to be really safe, chose the JE Backend. If you have time to test, stage your directory service before putting it in production, you might want to go with the PDB Backend. As, moving forward, we will focus our performance testing and improvements on the PDB backend essentially.

That’s all for now. In a followup post, I will continue to review the changes in OpenDJ 3.0…

Meanwhile, you can download OpenDJ 3.0 from ForgeRock’s BackStage and start playing with it. And check the Release Notes for more information.

PS: The followup posts have been published:

New version of ForgeRock Identity Platformâ„¢

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This week, we have announced the release of the new version of the ForgeRock Identity Platform, which brings new services in the following areas :

  • Continuous Security at Scale
  • Security for Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Enhanced Data Privacy Controls

FRPlatform

This is also the first identity management solution to fully implement the User-Managed Access (UMA) standard, making it possible for organizations to address expanding privacy regulations and establish trusted digital relationships. See the article that Eve Maler, VP of Innovation at ForgeRock and Chief UMAnitarian posted to explain UMA and what it can do for you.

A more in depth description of the new features of the ForgeRock Identity Platform has also been posted.

The ForgeRock Identity Platform is available for download now at https://www.forgerock.com/downloads/

In future posts, I will detail what is new in the Directory Services part, built on the OpenDJ project.

LDAPCon 2015

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22494196563_56cdbd5a6c_zTime flies… LDAPCon 2015 has happened and we all have returned from Edinburgh to our daily lives.

As for the previous editions, this year’s conference was well attended, very friendly, with plenty of time to socialize around a (few) pint(s) of beer.

23126811911_71434b0311_mDavid Goodman started the conference with a keynote presentation that illustrated the long path followed by LDAP, but also how important it still is in the major industries, especially in the Telco world.

My 2 presentations were given on the first day of the conference. The first one was about “LDAP Asynchronous Programming” and the Promises API we’ve added in the OpenDJ LDAP SDK.

The second presentation was an update on the OpenDJ project with a highlight on what is in the OpenDJ 3.0 release due mid December.

All of the presentations are already available through the web site, either in the Programme section, or directly in the Downloads section.

Thanks and kudos to this year’s organisers : Andrew Findlay and Stephen Quinney.

As usual, you can get a glimpse of the conference and people on my photo album.

LDAPCon 2015 photo album by Ludovic Poitou
LDAPCon 2015

LDAPCon is this week…

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Starting Wednesday with tutorials, and the main conference on Thursday and Friday, the 5th International LDAP Conference happens in Edinburg, this week.

I will be there during the 3 days, along with several members of the OpenDJ team. I hope to see you there.

ForgeRock is a platinium sponsor of the conference. We are offering a free pass to the conference. If you can be in Edinburg at the end of the week and you are interested, please reach out to me.

Learning Curve

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A few years ago I had the pleasure to work with Rajesh Rajasekharan at Sun. He was an efficient trainer on Sun products and especially on Sun Directory Server. He recently joined ForgeRock and has started a series of blog posts and screen-casts on ForgeRock products and especially OpenDJ, but not only !

If you are getting started with the products or want to see demos of them, there’s no better place than to be on the “Learning Curve”