We use SSL (Secure Socket Layers) to provide secure and encrypted connections to the LDAP server. You should have a working installation of OpenSSL and either:
know how to create and manage SSL certificates using your own certification authority, or
purchase certificates from a certification authority.
Explaining how to obtain your certificates is out of the scope of this HOWTO, as there are a lot of very good HOWTOs on this subject.
We also assume you have a logger installed and configured, so you may use the output of all the components involved in case there's anything failing. In our case we use syslog-ng, and we provide a sample configuration file for it. This file may be adapted to other loggers with little effort. Again, we don't provide directions for installing and configuring a log system, as this is a common piece of software in every Unix/Linux system.