Advanced settings

AutoSync provides several methods of executing run profiles simultaneously that you can choose from depending on your requirements for speed, reliability, and supportability. These are the supported, unsupported, and exclusive modes.

The three modes both implement different sets of rules as set by Microsoft. Before getting started, it's important to know two very important MIM sync engine rules

1. As most MIM administrators know, recent versions of the sync engine prevent you from running a synchronization profile on more than one management agent at a time. Attempting to do so results in an error (0x8023063D)

2. What many MIM administrators don't know is that if you run a delta import on the MIM service MA, and a synchronization on another management agent at the same time, the sync service will become frozen, and you will have to kill the service and restart it

Regardless of the execution mode you choose, AutoSync will always enforce these 2 rules.

However, in order to be supported by Microsoft in all scenarios, there is a third rule to consider.

3. If any management agent is running a synchronization operation, no other management agent can be running any run profile.

This is the difference between the supported and unsupported modes. Supported mode will respect the above rule, and ensure no other run profile is executing when a synchronziation is required. When a synchronization run profile is required, AutoSync prevents any new jobs from starting, waits for all existing jobs to finish, executes the synchronization profile, and then resumes normal operations. It is recommend to run in supported mode at all times.

Unsupported mode allows import, export and synchronization profiles to overlap (while still enforcing rules 1 and 2), as rule 3 is not enforced by the sync engine. This setting should only be used if you really know what you are doing, and the management agents involved do not have overlapping connectors and metaverse objects.

The final mode, exclusive mode, simply executes one run profile at a time, in the order they were requested, no matter their type. This is useful for troubleshooting purposes, and perhaps in environments where time-sensitivity is not an issue. It's really slow, but still faster than using a batch run scheduler and executing them one at a time in a sequence, as AutoSync won't execute any run profiles that don't need to be run.