LDAP Replication Service

The replication service supplied with the Sun Directory Services enables you to set up a replication strategy for your directory service. You can use replication to share the load of client requests over several servers, and also to reduce overall communication costs by keeping network traffic local.

Replication can apply to a subtree, a particular entry, or a subset of attributes of an entry in the Directory Information Tree.

Sun Directory Services provides two replication daemons, dspushd and dspulld. The dspushd daemon pushes updates from the master server to the slave server, whereas the dspulld daemon pulls updates from the master. With the former, the master server manages the replication schedule, whereas with the latter, the slave manages the replication schedule. The communication protocol used by both daemons is LDAP.

Sun Directory Services also includes an NIS replication process associated with the NIS server.