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List:       kroupware
Subject:    [Kroupware] FAQ: flexible administration of multiple kolab servers
From:       Martin Konold <martin.konold () erfrakon ! de>
Date:       2002-09-30 5:43:24
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Question: How to make administration more flexible when employing a large
number of kolab servers without forcing the users to change the setup of
their clients?

Answer:
Basically the user has to maintain the following data in his client

email address: hans_mayer@kde.org
kolab_uid: hans_mayer_kde_org
kolab_password: <mypassword> 
kolab_server: kolab.kde.org

This means that if the administrator decides for whatever reason (e.g.
scalability, availability etc.) to move a user to a new machine the user
has to be notified and needs to change settings in his client.
For clients like OL/Bynari this is unfortunately non trivial.

The proposed solution to this issue is to use the _very_ scalable DNS for
our purposes.

Basically we add for every account an A record in DNS which is pointing to
the correct kolab server.

e.g. hans_mayer_kde_org.kde.org points to kolab.kde.org in our case.

So what did we gain?

1. We only have to tell the user the following highly redundant data

kolab_uid: hans_mayer_kde_org
kolab_password: mypassword
kolab_server: hans_mayer_kde_org.kde.org

Such data can be rather easily remembered by the user (think about roaming
users etc.) and is very easy for support staff to communicate. 

2.  In addition the administrator can much more easily move users to different 
servers in a transparent manner.

3. Last but not least when looking up freebusy lists or other data for other
users (e.g. a shared folder) it is much easier to locate the appropriate
server.

E.g. your kolab server is kolab.kde.org aka hans_mayer_kde_org.kde.org and
you want to lookup the freebusy list of someone you know has the uid
john_doe_foo_com you only need to download the freebusy list from
https://john_doe_foo_com.foo.com/freebusy/john_doe_foo_com.vfb without the
need to be aware on which server John Doe has its account. Of course this 
assumes that the server 
john_doe_foo_com allows access to the requested data.

Yours,
--martin
--
Dipl.-Phys. Martin Konold
e r f r a k o n
Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker
Germanenstrasse 15, 70563 Stuttgart, Germany
email: martin.konold@erfrakon.de

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