Password Policies in a Replicated Environment

Configuration information for the default password policy is not replicated. Instead, it is part of the server instance configuration. If you modify the default password policy, the same modifications must be made on each server in the topology. If you need a password policy that is replicated, you must define a specialized password policy under a part of the directory tree that is replicated.

All password information that is stored in the user entry is replicated. This information includes the current password, password history, password expiration dates and so forth.

Consider the following impact of password policies in a replicated environment:

• A user with an impending password expiration receives a warning from every replica to which the user binds before changing his password.

• When a user changes his password, the new password might take a while to be updated on all replicas. A situation could arise where a user changes his password and then immediately rebinds to one of the consumer replicas with the new password. In this case, the bind could fail until the replica receives the updated password. This situation can be alleviated using prioritized replication to force password changes to be replicated first.