Type of administration

You must decide how much control the individual sites will have over their replicas. Your choices are centralized administration, individual administration, or some combination of the two.

Centralized administration

With centralized administration, there is a hub site. For each family, all its replicas are mastered by a replica at the hub site. Administrators at the hub site maintain all replicas and all synchronization patterns and schedules. These administrators have permission to access the replica servers at all sites.

Advantages of this scheme:
  • Your company does not have to hire a MultiSite administrator for each site.
  • It is easier to ensure that schedules do not conflict.
Disadvantages:
  • Some administrative procedures require a replica to be self-mastering.
  • If HCL VersionVault administration is done at a local level, the MultiSite administrators must have knowledge of all local administrative procedures (for example, backups and server maintenance).
  • Remote access to all sites is required.

Individual administration

With individual administration, each replica is self-mastering and there is an administrator at each site. Administrators are responsible for creating and maintaining replicas, synchronization patterns, and synchronization schedules at their sites.

Advantages of this scheme:
  • No mastership changes are required when an administrator needs to change replica properties.
  • Administrators can ensure that MultiSite administrative procedures do not conflict with HCL VersionVault administration.
Disadvantages:
  • A MultiSite administrator is needed at each site.
  • Communication among administrators can be difficult if the company has sites in multiple time zones.

Semi-centralized administration

You can also have semi-centralized administration. For example, sites with major development efforts have local MultiSite administrators, and responsibility for administering smaller sites is distributed among the MultiSite administrators.