[Kroupware] FAQ: flexible administration of multiple kolab servers

[Martin Konold]

On Monday 30 September 2002 09:13 am, you wrote:

Hi Brad,

> > For clients like OL/Bynari this is unfortunately non trivial.
>
> SLPv2 would be much nicer, except you can't modify the client to suppor=
t
> it.

Yes, I agree but will SLP work in non LAN environment like dial up intern=
et?

And of course on the other hand I am not so keen on hacking OL to underst=
and=20
SLP ;-)

> > The proposed solution to this issue is to use the _very_ scalable DNS=
 for
> > our purposes.
>
> There will be some people who object to using DNS. They think it is
> pollution. I am not one of them, but they are a vocal minority :)

Yeah, I am ware of these vocal minorities. Actually they simply can use=20
another technique. Basically I want to document a possible solution to th=
e=20
problem.

> > Basically we add for every account an A record in DNS which is pointi=
ng
> > to the correct kolab server.
>
> A record is not so nice.  You probably wanted to create CNAME records.
> Otherwise you need to change one A record per user if you have to chang=
e
> the IP on the machine. If you just have CNAMEs for users, you only need=
 to
> change it once.

This is indeed a vaild point. Which kind of disadvantages do I have to ex=
pect=20
when using CNAMES? What about SMTP?

> If you have client support (probably not), you can use SRV records
> (SRV2052), maybe even in conjunction with PTR records (see
> http://www.dns-sd.org for an old Internet Draft). This is basically wha=
t
> Apple Rendezvous does.

Yeah, http://files.dns-sd.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-nias.txt looks=20
interesting. Do you know anything about the current status? (The draft di=
d=20
already expire)

> > 2.  In addition the administrator can much more easily move users to
> > different servers in a transparent manner.
>
> With Dynamic DNS, you can do this automagically from the LDAP server.

Please elaborate.

Regards,
--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