All Entries and Indexes Fit Into Memory

In the optimum case, the database cache and the entry cache fit into the physical memory available. The entry caches are large enough to hold all entries in the directory. The database cache is large enough to hold all indexes and entries. In this case, searches find everything in cache. Directory Server never has to go to file system cache or to disk to retrieve entries.

Ensure that database cache can contain all database indexes, even after updates and growth. When space runs out in the database cache for indexes, Directory Server must read indexes from disk for every search request, severely impacting throughput. You can monitor paging and cache activity with DSCC or through the command line.

Appropriate cache sizes must be determined through empirical testing with representative data. In general, the database cache size can be calculated as (total size of database files) x 1.2. Start by allocating a large amount of memory for the caches. Then exercise and monitor Directory Server to observe the result, repeating the process as necessary. Entry caches in particular might use much more memory than you allocate to these caches.