Cell Management Guidelines

The following are some recommended cell management guidelines:

Note: These guidelines are based on existing information regarding performance and scaling of the DCE core services.

· A cell should not exceed 10,000 users.

· All cells should have at least one DCE Cell Directory Service (CDS) server. If there is to be no single point of failure, you can replicate the cell's entire CDS namespace on two or more server machines or partition CDS directories across multiple servers but each server must be hosted on a different machine.

· Each cell should have at least one DCE Security Service server. If there is to be no single point of failure, you can replicate the cell's entire Security Service on two or more servers but you must host each server on a different machine. (Note: You must be running OSF DCE Version 1.0.2 or higher to replicate the DCE Security Service.)

· Each cell must have at least one Global Directory Agent (DNS/BIND or GDS/X.500) server. If there is to be no single point of failure, you can replicate the cell's GDA on two or more servers but each server must be hosted on a different machine.

· Complex cells should have at least three DCE Distributed Time Service (DTS) servers. If there is to be no single point of failure, you can install DTS on four or more servers but each server must be hosted on a different machine.

· Complex cells should dedicate machines to host DCE core services and not place applications or other services on them. Simple cells may need to host multiple DCE core services on one machine for cost/performance reasons.

· Complex cells should host only one DCE core service on a server except for DTS, which can coexist on a single machine with GDA, CDS, or DCE Security. Simple cells that are not primarily concerned with service availability may elect to host multiple DCE core services on a single server.

· Simple and complex cells should replicate all DCE core services to make them failsafe, unless the cell's user population can tolerate system downtime.

· Alpha machines running Digital UNIX as servers improve performance and speed.

· All cells should optimize the cost and performance of server machine placement on a service-by-service basis, based on the cell user population's use of the service.