[wpkg-users] Remote site repositories

[Donny Brooks]

On Monday, May 14, 2012 12:05 PM CDT, Rainer Meier <r.meier at wpkg.org> wrote: 
 
> Hi Donny,
> 
> On 14.05.2012 18:14, Donny Brooks wrote:
> > I understand. So what I was thinking of doing with the clients still going back to the centralized wpkg server for configs but pulling software from local servers should work if I read correctly. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't mess anything completely up before I started testing a small group. Thanks again.
> 
> Yes this is supposed to work. But there are other possible solutions as well.
> You could also set up a local DNS server (or use hosts resolution or whatever 
> you prefer to redirect users to the right "local" WPKG Server.
> 
> Especially nowadays many clients are portable/mobile and often carried from one 
> location to another. When a client is carried from location A to location B it 
> would still access servers from location A (this time remotely).
> 
> So if you can (local DNS servers available) I would recommend setting up a 
> hostname dedicated for WPKG like wpkg.domain.tld and then configure all clients 
> the same way. So if a client on location A connects to 
> \\wpkg.domain.tld\wpkg-share then it connects to the local server in location A 
> and if the client is temporary moved to location B then it uses the local WPKG 
> server on location B without re-configuration.
> 
> Of course this only works if you can either have a server with the same IP in 
> both locations or with the same hostname resolved differently in different 
> locations.
> 
> 
> If you are fine with hard-wiring a client->server association, then you might 
> also consider defining the SOFWARE variable on profile level. Grouping all hosts 
> of one location into a profile and defining SOFTWARE at profile level. This way 
> you can even change the hostname any time without having to roll out new WPKG 
> configuration to the clients.
> Although even in this method roaming clients would not automatically connect to 
> the corresponding local server automatically but always try to connect to the 
> WPKG server which is hard-wired in profile.
> 
> 
> Well, thinking about more possibilities there might be an option to define 
> different SOFTWARE variable values depending on IP ranges or other host 
> properties using conditional variables. A mapping like
> If network 192.168.1.0/24 then SOFTWARE=\\192.168.1.x\wpkg\software
> If network 192.168.2.0/24 then SOFTWARE=\\192.168.2.x\\wpkg\software
> 
> This way if a host uses DHCP and is roaming between to IP networks it would 
> always connect to the local server.
> 
> 
> In any case I would recommend the DNS resolver solution outlined above.
> 
> br,
> Rainer
 

Thanks for the detailed explination Rainer. With our setup I think that the best way to do this would be your last sugestion about the IF network deal. This is because each location and/or division has their own /24 network. We do not have any machines that traverse to other networks so the migratory nature is not an issue. Thanks again for the information.

-- 
Donny B.