I've nearly incorporated all of the information you fine folks have provided, at least as far as common usage scenarios go, into the docs.
One final gap remains in my knowledge... I have the impression that a replica can be set up to have a subset of all the users/mailboxes of a master. Have I misunderstood something or is this the case? If so, where would such a thing be configured? To date everything looks as if each replica is set up to be a clone of the master, so each change gets written multiple times, one to each sync log (one sync log per channel, one channel per sync client, one sync client per sync server). Am I right in assuming that a 'channel' is a virtual construct, a piece of nomenclature; something that defines the linkage configuration between master and replica? Nicola