Snow Leopard Server- replicate user home folders on OD replica?

[sevhan]

We are looking to do an upgrade of our Leopard server to Snow Leopard.
As well as doing this we are planning on implementing a failover server since we do not have one at the moment.

I got all the information needed to configure a open directory replica as well as other services.
The one spot I am having issues finding info on is if the user home directory is replicated, if not how can I manage this?

Currently the Open Directory master also hosts the user home folders.
Is it possible with a Open directory replica server to replicate the users home directories? so that if the master(who is hosting the users home folders) goes down, the users will then have access to their home folders on the open directory replica?

I’m going through the apple guides but cannot find information on this.
Trying to make the network as redundant as possible as we move forward.

Thanks!

 

[foidulus]

We are looking to do an upgrade of our Leopard server to Snow Leopard.
As well as doing this we are planning on implementing a failover server since we do not have one at the moment.

I got all the information needed to configure a open directory replica as well as other services.
The one spot I am having issues finding info on is if the user home directory is replicated, if not how can I manage this?

Currently the Open Directory master also hosts the user home folders.
Is it possible with a Open directory replica server to replicate the users home directories? so that if the master(who is hosting the users home folders) goes down, the users will then have access to their home folders on the open directory replica?

I’m going through the apple guides but cannot find information on this.
Trying to make the network as redundant as possible as we move forward.

Thanks!

Depends on what you want. If you want seamless failover, short answer is you can't namely because the user profiles point to a certain computer for their home directory. So if that computer goes down then even if the replica takes over the OD duties all the profiles will still be pointing at the old computer for their home.

This is why Apple actually recommends that you have 2 separate servers with IP failover do the file sharing, but that is a bit overkill for most organizations.

If you just want file backup you'll have to manage that from outside the OD(such as using rsync).

It does sort of suck that Apple doesn't support backup home directories, but what can you do.

 

[logandzwon]

I agree with foidulus,

To achieve what your talking about you'll need two AFP servers sharing some kind of data store (ie, XSAN) doing IP failover. See this link for more info;

http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20051018203349525