[Samba] sysvol replication options

[Mark Johnson]

I'm setting up a new AD infrastructure using purely Samba AD servers.  I
have seven servers up and running, and I'm looking at options for sysvol
replication.  I've looked into the rsync option that involves master ->
multiple slaves and ensuring all GPO edits, login script modifications etc
are done on the master server.  Also looked at an alternate rsync solution
that is meshed, but of course doesn't delete files (don't really like this
second option).

Another idea I've had is to run up a small virtual machine as a Nextcloud
server and use the owncloud cli client to run every 10 minutes via a cron
job on each Samba server to sync the sysvol folder (it has to be triggered
manually since the command line client isn't a daemon and doesn't monitor
for file changes and sync automatically).  I'd stagger these client runs so
that one server runs at minute 0,10,20 etc then the next at 1,11,12 and so
on.  This way there would only be one server syncing at a time, and all
servers should be in sync within 20 minutes of a change being made.

The thing I like about this solution is a) changes can be made on any
server and they will be replicated to all other servers; b) anything
deleted will also be deleted elsewhere; c) adding new domain controllers to
the mix will be an easy task and I won't need to worry about updating
complicated meshed rsync configurations.

The thing is that searching around, I don't see anyone that has tried this
before so I'm wondering if there's a glaringly obvious reason I shouldn't
do it.  I'm currently toying with it in a test environment and can't see
any problems so far.

Regards,
Mark