Implementation Guide › Performance Tuning

Performance Tuning

Performance Tuning Introduced

The Policy Server evaluates and enforces access control policies by servicing three basic requests:

• IsProtected—is the requested resource protected?
• IsAuthenticated—did the user requesting the resource present credentials to establish an identity?
• IsAuthorized—is the authenticated user authorized to view the protected resource?

Servicing each of these requests creates transactions between SiteMinder components. SiteMinder performance tuning is the iterative process of increasing throughput and reducing latency by:

• Understanding where and when these transactions occur
• Identifying the SiteMinder settings and features that affect performance
• Using third-party and SiteMinder tools to measure performance and identify infrastructure bottlenecks

A good strategy is to examine performance factors in the web, application, and data tiers.

Note: SiteMinder is middleware and is not deployed independently. The following sections focus on tuning SiteMinder components in the Web and Application tiers, but not how to tune the actual Web, Application, or Data tiers themselves. See your vendor–specific documentation for more information about tuning the web servers, directory servers, and databases in your environment.

Performance Tuning Roadmap

Performance tuning is an iterative process, and as such, it is important to address the Web, Application, and Data tiers on an individual basis to understand how each can affect overall performance. You can often achieve better performance by changing configuration settings in SiteMinder Agents, Policy Servers, or the SiteMinder policy objects themselves. The following diagram represents a standard deployment and details the individual components that are central to performance.

1. The types of web and applications servers deployed in your environment can affect how a SiteMinder Agent and Policy Server communicate.
2. The number of available sockets can affect the efficiency in which an agent and Policy Server communicate.
3. SiteMinder policy design can affect the efficiency in which the Policy Server services authentication and authorization requests.
4. The Policy Server performs a series of services to authenticate and authorize users. These services result in number of reads and writes, collectively known as requests, to a user directory. A contributing factor to SiteMinder performance is determining whether your user directories can handle this workload during sustained and peak periods of operation.
5. The user directory itself can affect SiteMinder performance.

More information:

Server Performance

Web Tier Socket Usage

Reduce Traffic between Your Agents and the Policy Server

SiteMinder Policy Design and Performance

Data Tier Guidelines

User Store Capacity Planning