Implementation Guide › Performance Tuning › Data Tier Performance › User Store Capacity Planning › How to Estimate a Sustained User Directory Search Rate › Use Authorization Guidelines to Estimate Directory Searches

Use Authorization Guidelines to Estimate Directory Searches

A Policy Server makes a number of user directory requests to authorize a user. Some of the user directory requests are required to determine SiteMinder policy membership, while others are dependent on SiteMinder policy design. You can estimate the number of Policy Server requests that each authorization creates using the following guidelines.

• One search/query for each SiteMinder policy in the policy domain.

  Note: This guideline only applies to policies whose membership filter results in one or more user directory requests. For more information about the relationship between SiteMinder policy membership and user directory requests, see Policy Membership and Authorization Requests.

• One search/query for each policy that is bound to a response that returns user attributes.

  Note: For more information about the relationship between responses and user directory requests, see Responses and Authorization Performance.

The following use cases detail how you can use each guideline to determine the total number of user directory searches the authorization load creates.

Note: The user authorization cache can significantly reduce the number of authorization-related requests to user directories.