Well thank you Ron for this information as I'm not really familiar whith 
replacating databases. But the single hosted solution is something my bosses 
don't want at all. Our internet connection in our headquarters is reliable and 
redundant so that wouldn't be the problem. But what pretty often occurs is that 
one of our other locations are loosing there internet connectivity. As you 
might know it is hard to get redundancy at a payable price in some places of 
the world. But the location should still be able to use OTRS when there line is 
down as they would need it for the daily work. So any other ideas out there 
besides hosting a single system. 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Ron DeFulio
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 23. August 2007 16:27
An: 'User questions and discussions about OTRS.org'
Betreff: RE: [otrs] Database replication

Thorsten,

I think you need to reconsider your argument for master-master replication.
First, if you've got a "real slow connection" between the sites, your 
replication is going to be hopelessly backlogged.  Viewing HTML of a single 
ticket is -far less data- than replicating every change made into every table 
from every site.  Further, if the internet connection is down -forget about 
replication- because when mysql becomes desynched it basically does a full 
resync which takes HOURS on a full speed line.  I have experience with
mysql one-way replication and this is tedious on its own.   We experimented
with master-master replication on dedicated t1 lines and we had so many 
problems that we changed our model to a single-master and used the replicated 
nodes as read-only nodes (queueing the updates back to the master with a 
special api).  

If your headquarters does not have a reliable internet connection, you should 
consider hosting the application with an ISP that guarantees uptime.
If your branch locations are without internet, they are going to be down 
anyway.  With no connectivity to the other master databases you're going to 
have unresolvable synch issues where two people change the same ticket -- whose 
data is correct?  

You are expecting the OTRS application to "just work" in a master-master 
situation across slow or disconnected lines, let me assure you, if the OTRS 
programmers havent specifically built the software to work master-master in 
this situation, you're going to find that it screws up constantly.  Take the 
issue of creating a new record number.  Typically this process, which is what 
links all related tables and records together, needs to have a guaranteed 
unique number across the board.  Without a connection, a disconnected master 
doesn't know what numbers have been used up.  If two "record 1000's" are 
created in a master-master situation, you've got an unresolvable conflict.  You 
would have to uniquely identify every site with a unique prefix, and then only 
allocate numbers with those prefixes.  This logic would need to apply to every 
table where records can be added..
Users/groups/tickets/followups/customers... Practically every table.  This is 
not "typical" design requirement.  

Finally, as far as intranet/extranet this is a non-issue.  You secure the site 
at the ISP with a private cert and install a client cert onto every 
branch-office computer that allows them to access the site.  It secures the 
connection and prevents access outside the company without being issued a 
client cert.

Master-master replication is not a magic bullet to fix problems.  It's a very 
complex environment that is useful in specific cases where the need for 
master-master outweighs the downsides of its implementations.  Your 
requirements and your situation screams out for a single hosted application
at a secure location shared by your branch locations.   In the case of an
outage, cellular wifi internet will cut it for the simple html pages served up 
by OTRS.

I have experience doing master-master replication back in the dos days before 
mysql.  We wrote our own software to replicate changes across a 56k dedicated 
line between New York and California.  There is a lot behind making 
master-master work with any level of reliability.  Its imperitive to never lose 
a customer's data because of replication overwrites or conflicts.
This is difficult stuff to do and requires a level of granularity not
typical for every-day applications.   Microsoft Active Directory, for
example, manages master-master replication because every field in every record 
is timestamped and clocks are guaranteed to be synched across the domain.  
Microsoft uses a special technique of generating a GUID that is unique to a 
particular object so there are no conflicts.  These are concepts just outside 
the scope of OTRS and how it was intended to be used.  Again you are assuming 
these issues will just magically resolve themselves by turning on master-master 
replication in MYSQL or PostgreSQL and I think you'll find this is just not the 
case.

Good luck with your endeavor,

Ron


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 9:29 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: AW: [otrs] Database replication

Well what I try to accomplish is that every location has access to the same 
datasource to share information about the solutions. The main problem is that 
not all of our location are on the same network. And I really don't want to 
place the OTRS-System in the DMZ because we want to use it as an internal 
helpdesk tool. So yes we want to have an installation on every site but with 
the same (replicated) Database. We need to have the database on every location 
as some of them have a real slow connection to our headquarter. And my 
colleagues around the world should still be able to work with the system if 
there internet connection is down. But I will try it with the master-master 
replication and see if this will do for us.

Regards
Thorsten

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Peter van Beugen
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 22. August 2007 22:35
An: User questions and discussions about OTRS.org
Betreff: RE: [otrs] Database replication


I use MySQL (5.0.x) master-slave replication and it does a great job. But I use 
the slave as a backup server. MySQL 5.1 even promises better replication. check:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-nutshell.html

But I do not understand what you want to accomplish with replicated databases 
as OTRS is pure browser based. IMHO: put the webserver very close to the 
database server and you will have the best performance.
Or are you going tu use multiple distributed webservers?

regards,
Peter van Beugen



-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: [EMAIL PROTECTED] namens [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Verzonden: wo 22-8-2007 19:06
Aan: [email protected]
Onderwerp: [otrs] Database replication
 
Hi,
 
i'm working for an international operating company and we want to use otrs as 
our global helpdesk-system. So I need a way to replicate the databases to 
different location so that every location has the same view, or at least 
almost. Has anybody done this before and give me a little hint how to 
accomplish this.
 
Many thanks in Advance
 
Thorsten

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