Assigning the Courier Role to Servers
Courier servers play an important role in maintaining synchronization between the systems in separate parts of your network. A courier server requests a time value from at least one global server at every synchronization. This procedure enables a courier server to propagate times from remote systems to a LAN or local area, thereby keeping the LAN in synchronization with all the other parts of the network.
There are three courier roles that you can assign to a server (the courierrole attribute), as follows:
· backup
· courier
· noncourier
The default courier role for a global or local server at its creation is backup.
Use the courier setting for the courierrole attribute to designate a server as the primary link to other portions of your network. Use the backup setting to designate a server as a secondary link to other areas of the network. A backup courier is only effective if no other courier is available on the LAN.
Note that there are no significant processing or overhead penalties associated with the backup courier role; you can designate one of the servers on a LAN as a courier, and designate all the other servers on the LAN as backup couriers. If you have configured several servers as backup couriers and the courier becomes unavailable, the backup courier with the lowest ordered UUID becomes the effective courier.
To assign the courier role to a server, enter the following dcecp command:
dcecp> dts modify -change {courierrole courier}
dcecp>
To assign the backup courier role to a server, enter the following command:
dcecp> dts modify -change {courierrole backup}
dcecp>