3.2 Determining When to Use the Remote Loader

You can install the Identity Manager engine, Identity Vault, and the driver shim on the same server. The Identity Manager engine runs as part of an eDirectory process. The Identity Manager drivers can run on the server with the Identity Manager. They also can run as part of the same process as the Identity Manager engine. However, in the following scenarios, you might want the Identity Manager driver to run as a separate process on the server that hosts the Identity Manager engine:

To protect the Identity Vault from any exceptions encountered by the driver shim.
To improve the performance of the server running the Identity Manager engine, by offloading driver commands to the remote application or database.
To run additional drivers on servers that do not host the Identity Manager engine.

In these scenarios, the Remote Loader provides a communication channel between the Identity Manager engine and the driver. For example, you install an LDAP driver on the same server as the Identity Manager engine and the Identity Vault. Then you install the Active Directory (AD) driver on a different server with the Remote Loader. To allow the drivers to access the application and communicate with the Identity Vault, install the Remote Loader on both servers, as shown in the following figure.

NetIQ recommends that you use the Remote Loader configuration for use with your drivers where possible. Use the Remote Loader even in cases where the application is on the same server as the Identity Manager engine.

3.2.1 Understanding the Java Remote Loader

The Java Remote Loader provides the flexibility to load a driver shim on computers with UNIX or Linux servers that the native Remote Loader does not support. The Java Remote Loader is a Java application. You can use the Java Remote Loader with any publicly supported version of Java.

To open the application, run the shell script named dirxml_jremote. For more information, see Configuring the Java Remote Loader for Driver Instances.