Implementation Guide › CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security Capacity Planning › CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security Capacity Planning Introduced

CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security Capacity Planning Introduced

Planning a CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security deployment with performance in mind is the first step to maintaining high enterprise availability and performance standards. A good approach is to estimate the number of expected requests CA SiteMinder® must handle per web service. The following are the most significant factors that influence CA SiteMinder® performance:

• Sustained request rates. The rate at which web service clients send requests to protected web service resources fluctuates throughout your business day. Some periods can generate relatively few requests, and therefore require relatively few authentications and authorizations, while others generate more. The sustained request rates represent a sustained period during which CA SiteMinder® must service an average number of authentication and authorization requests.

  Note: Each web service request triggers one authentication and one authorization event.

• Peak request rates. During sustained periods of activity, web service client activity may spike. The peak request rates represent a period during which CA SiteMinder® must service the highest number of authentication and authorization requests.

The following graphic illustrates how request rates fluctuate throughout the day, are sustained for a specific period, and peak within that period:

Note: Authenticating and authorizing requests results in a number of reads from a user store. Determining sustained and peak rates helps you determine the load under which your user stores must operate to service Policy Server requests.

More information:

Performance Tuning Introduced

Use Case: Capacity Planning

The purpose of the following use case is to illustrate how example.com, a fulfillment service organization approaches capacity planning by modeling the usage of their order fulfillment web service. The use case is referenced throughout this chapter for examples.

The company is planning to deploy CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security to protect its web service. The company has 10,000 users in a single user store.

Some web service clients send a single status request to the inventory operation of the web service once a day while others may send as many as four batched order requests per day to the fulfillment operation.