OSX Server WGM replication

[linkazoid]

Hi All,

 

Another week another issue.. Thanks for the help provided by all so far. Please bear with me, i'm not usually so involved with the Mac side of our network but I want to solve issues. So if i'm not providing enough information then please let me know. We didn't do the initial configuration a couple of years ago either.

 

We have two Mac Minis both running 10.9.5 - labelled MacSRV001 and MacSRV002 both have the Server app installed.

We use WGM to configure our 90 Mac clients, but for whatever reason the information is not being synchronised between them. If we make a change on MacSRV001 then we have to apply the same WGM preference on MacSRV002.

 

What is the normal way of this information being synch'd?

How can I tell from a client where it is getting its preferences from?

 

Thanks,

 

Michael

[linkazoid]

*small bump*

[slancaster]

Hmmm... should the data replicate? Ive never seen a true mirrored OD.

And your still on workgroup manager instead of profile manager?

[linkazoid]

I have no idea if it should replicate, I just assumed that it did as we didn't have to put the preference on both servers before. Perhaps the MacSRV001 is having more issues than we thought.

 

Like I said, I don't have much involvement in the Mac side. It's a bugbear that we are using 10.9 when 10.11 is released. We are always so far behind.

Can you use Profile manager on 10.9?

[slancaster]

Profile manager has been available since 10.8 I think... maybe even 10.7. Its a big change from WGM though and depending on your Apple knowledge and size of estate, it could be worth sticking with your working solution. They dropped WGM for 10.9, but there was such an uproar Apple brought it back but doesn't support it from 10.10 onwards.

 

We use a main mac server, with some Replicas but these only help with the load on the Open Directory side of things. Backups are done via Time Machine but certainly not mirrored across servers in any way. It sounds like you have a master and a replica but maybe assuming they "mirror" rather than load balance.

[AntonioRocco]

WGM has never replicated. At least not in the sense I think you mean? You should really be using Profile Manager as WGM was deprecated at least two OSes ago even though it still works after a fashion. Basically it’s very old software and has been around since Jaguar (10.2) Server days.

 

Management settings created on MacSRV001 will only apply to the Macs that are joined to it regardless of whether managed settings are applied at Group or Computer level. For the amount of Macs you have it’s not clear why you would need two mac servers? In a classic AD-OD integration all your users and home profiles would be on AD which would also do the authentication. In such an environment the only thing that would come from the Mac Server would be managed settings. Even if you had 100s of Macs one server would still be enough as there would very little data stored (property lists are not large) and the ‘load’ - such as it is - would be minimal.

 

You can tell which server your clients are getting their preferences from by logging into a workstation and looking in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options. Click on the lock and click the button by the side of Network Account Server. You’ll see the OD Master listed with either its fqdn or IP address. If all you see as you go around them all is MacSRV001 then what’s MacSRV002 doing other than being switched on? If you see some on one and some on another I have to ask why as there’s no real sense in administering two mac servers in this way when one would do the job easily.

 

What you could use the second server for though is hardware redundancy. Target disk mode it to the first one and use CCC to clone it on a schedule. That way if your primary server goes down you can quickly swop the ethernet cable over, power down or disconnect it and power up/reboot the secondary which will then become the primary. You’re back up and running within a couple of minutes. Repair the 'old' primary when you can and use target disk mode again to make it the secondary.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[linkazoid]

Thank you both for your replies. I will discuss this with my team tomorrow and will come back to you.

[mrnoisy]

Sounds very similar to our inherited setup, I must confess that as the Mac infrastructure pretty much just works it has been neglected for a while.

Oh how I wish I hadn't, we are now needing to upgrade OS very quickly from mountain lion ( I know )

And things have moved on somewhat, we were/are also using workgroup manager.

Looks like I have lots of work to do now [emoji16]

Any tips we have a very large estate, approximately 300 2012 iMacs , 50 MacBook pros