Changing mastership of VOB objects

When you create an object in a replicated VOB, your current replica is the new object’s master replica. To transfer mastership of the object to another replica, use the chmaster command or the Properties Browser (Windows®).

Some examples of when transferring mastership of a VOB object is appropriate:
  • If responsibility for product integration is shifted to a different site, you must transfer mastership of the integration branch types or branches to the replica at that site.
  • Before you decommission a replica, you must transfer mastership of each object mastered by that replica to one of the remaining replicas.
Mastership changes are communicated among replicas by the standard synchronization mechanism. The general procedure for changing mastership is as follows:
  1. Change mastership of one or more objects to another replica or request mastership of a branch or branch type.
  2. Export and send an update packet from the old master replica to the new master replica. (The reqmaster command does this automatically.)
  3. Import the update packet at the new master replica.

Until the update packet containing the mastership change is imported at the new master replica, mastership is "in the packet" and the replicas in the VOB family have different information about which replica masters the object.

For example, the administrator at the sanfran_hub replica transfers mastership of the bugfix branch to the bangalore replica, and then exports an update packet. At this point, before the packet is imported at the bangalore replica:
  • The sanfran_hub replica considers the branch to be mastered by bangalore.
  • The bangalore replica considers the branch to be mastered by sanfran_hub.
  • No one at any replica can create new versions on the branch.

When you complete the mastership transfer by importing the update packet at bangalore, developers at bangalore are able to create new versions on the branch.

Notes on mastership changes:
  1. The chmaster command requires a view context.
  2. If your family includes any read-only or one-way replicas (replicas that import update packets but do not export them), be careful about transferring mastership to these replicas. After you give mastership of an object to a read-only or one-way replica, you cannot change the object’s mastership again unless you change the VOB family’s synchronization pattern.
  3. You cannot undo a mastership change made at your site by making the opposite change at your site. See Fixing an accidental mastership change.
  4. You can use triggers to prevent developers from changing mastership of objects. For more information, see "Implementing project development policies" in Help.

The topics on transferring mastership describe how to change mastership of objects using the command line. For information about using the Properties Browser on Windows to transfer mastership of an HCL VersionVault object, see the HCL VersionVault MultiSite Help.