Hi,
I understand that you are looking to better understand which kind of LDAP user directory type to use with Jira Service Desk Server. In most deployments that only have Jira Service Desk, I don't think it will really matter which user directory type you select here. The reason I say that is because Jira Service Desk will tend to have the vast majority of end users (customers) as unlicensed Jira users. In most cases I have seen, these user accounts are not being managed by an LDAP server anyways.
For most Jira server deployments, that have say less than 5000 user in LDAP, I would recommend using the LDAP / MS Active Directory option (#2 in your description). The reason for this is that using this kind of user directory will constantly sync your your data (users and groups) into Jira's database on an internal of say every hour. This will populate Jira with these user accounts and groups automatically. For most setups this is ideal.
However for enterprise level customers that have very large numbers of users (or large numbers of groups) potentially in LDAP, using the directory type of Internal with LDAP Authentication tends to provide an overall better performance experience in Jira. The caveat with this method is that this method doesn't have an interval sync process to copy user data to Jira. The actual user accounts won't exist in Jira until that user attempts to login to Jira at least once there. That can pose a problem for user accounts that don't know that this particular Jira site even exists yet.
If you're not sure, I'd still tend to recommend the syncing directory over the internal one. More details in Configuring user directories.
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this.
Andy
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.