[Kroupware] FAQ: flexible administration of multiple kolab servers

[Martin Konold]

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>=20
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 t=
o
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 roamin=
g
users etc.) and is very easy for support staff to communicate.=20

2.  In addition the administrator can much more easily move users to diff=
erent=20
servers in a transparent manner.

3. Last but not least when looking up freebusy lists or other data for ot=
her
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 an=
d
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 th=
e
need to be aware on which server John Doe has its account. Of course this=
=20
assumes that the server=20
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