Synchronization can be performed with an LDAP V3-compliant source, such as IBM SDS (Tivoli Directory Server), Oracle Unified Directory, DSEE, or OpenDJ, by configuring a Generic LDAP Sync Source. PingDataSync relies on the source server having a cn=changelog implementation. If the server does not have a cn=changelog implementation, a Server SDK Change Detector extension can be configured to define the change detection criteria that PingDataSync should use.

If multiple Generic LDAP Sync Source instances are defined, the order in which they are added is used as a priority order for failover. If server locations are defined, PingDataSync will always fail over to servers that are in the same location. If there are multiple Sync Sources in the same location as PingDataSync, then PingDataSync will fail over to the first local server in the list and proceed down the list.

During synchronization, when a change is detected by PingDataSync, the changed entry is fetched from the source. Initially, the DN of the entry is used to search for the entry. If that search fails then a second search is performed using the unique-id-attribute if it is defined. This is typically an operational attribute that is automatically generated by the server, such as entryUUID.