Overview of replication in an entry-balancing environment

In an entry-balanced deployment some data is replicated everywhere, such as the schema, the server registry, and other shared data, and some data is replicated only on certain servers.

A replication domain contains all of the servers in a replicated topology and shares a schema. The replication domain is associated with the base distinguished name (DN) and must be a base DN of a backend.

By default, replication propagates updates to all replication servers in the topology. However, updates to data under the entry-balancing point must be replicated only among server instances in the same data set. Replication requires that in these deployments the PingDirectory server is configured with a replication-set-name global configuration property and two backends. One backend has a base DN that is replicated globally, such as dc=example,dc=com, and the second backend has a base DN associated with the entry-balancing point, such as ou=people,dc=example,dc=com.

The following illustration demonstrates the global and restricted backends in a directory information tree (DIT).

An illustration of the directory information tree and global and restricted backends. The illustration provides a drawing of a large triangle that represents the userRoot backend and contains the global base distinguished name, dc=example,dc=com, mentioned at the top of the large triangle. A smaller triangle is inside the large triangle, positioned in the lower right corner and represents the dataSet backend. The smaller triangle contains the base distinguished name associated with the entry-balancing point, ou=people,dc=example,dc=com, mentioned at the top of the small triangle. At the bottom of the illustration is the abbreviation DIT, which stands for directory information tree.

If a data set name is not defined when you set up the PingDirectoryProxy server, one is provided by default. The proper configuration of an entry-balancing environment requires coordination between the PingDirectory server and the PingDirectoryProxy server. After you enable replication, you can designate the replication domain as the domain participating in entry balancing.

For more details about replication, managing the replication topology, and working with multiple backends, see the PingDirectory Server Administration Guide.