Chapter 4. Installing and Uninstalling Identity Management Replicas

Replicas are created by cloning the configuration of existing Identity Management servers. Therefore, servers and their replicas share identical core configuration. The replica installation process copies the existing server configuration and installs the replica based on that configuration.
Maintaining several server replicas is a recommended backup solution to avoid data loss, as described in the "Backup and Restore in IdM/IPA" Knowledgebase solution.

Note

Another backup solution, recommended primarily for situations when rebuilding the IdM deployment from replicas is not possible, is the ipa-backup utility, as described in Chapter 9, Backing Up and Restoring Identity Management.

4.1. Explaining IdM Replicas

Replicas are created as clones of the initial master servers. Once a replica is created, it is functionally identical to the master server: servers and replicas created from these servers share the same internal information about users, machines, certificates, and configured policies.

Note

For more information on the types of machines in the IdM topology, see Section 1.2, “The Identity Management Domain”.
Replication is the process of copying data between replicas. The information between replicas is shared using multi-master replication: all replicas joined through a replication agreement receive updates and are therefore considered data masters.
Server and Replica Agreements

Figure 4.1. Server and Replica Agreements