Has a shared vault on LAN a local copy as well?

ppd

Hi all,

i want to buy 1Password Licenses for my hole IT-Team, to easily sync passwords with a shared folder on our local server, so without using dropbox.

My Question:
Is there on every mac, using the shared vault, a local copy of the complete vault?

If you answer this question with yes, imho 1password meets the following conditions:

• If the Server have a data loss, i can restore the shared vault from one of my colleagues macs (or creating a new sharing vault from the existing local one). So no need for backing up the Diskstation File to a "insecure cloud" service, cause we have backups on multiple Laptops. Right?

• If one of my colleagues is out of office and can´t use VPN (no internet in train or something like that), she/he can still use the last synced Version of the Vault and can work "offline". Right?

Hope i get two "rights" :chuffed:

Thanks in advance
PPD

P.S. Sry for my untrained english ;)

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1Password Version: 5.3
OS Version: Yosemite
Sync Type: LAN

Drew_AG

Hi @ppd,

It's great that you're thinking of buying 1Password licenses for your team! :)

You'll be happy to know that the answers to your questions are: Yes, Right, and Right. So it sounds like you have a pretty good understanding of how 1Password for Mac works! Now, to elaborate and give you a bit more information about all that:

1Password for Mac stores your vaults locally in an SQLite file. When you use a sync option (like Dropbox or Folder sync) for a vault, 1Password copies the data between the local SQLite database and a separate sync file. That sync file is the one that is copied to/from the other Macs that sync with the same vault. With Dropbox and Folder sync, the sync file is called "[vault name].agilekeychain".

So, anyone who adds that shared vault to 1Password on their Mac will have a local copy of the vault (in the SQLite file) which will work even if the Mac doesn't have an internet/network connection (although it will need to connect to your server to sync any changes). That also means that even if something happens to your server, the 1Password data on that server won't be lost, because it still exists on the Macs.

To sync a vault to your server, you'll need to use the Folder sync option in 1Password, configure that to point to a local folder on the Mac, and then use a tool such as rsync (or another file copy tool) to copy the contents of the local folder to/from the server. The reason you don't want to have it sync directly to the server is because 1Password gets upset when it encounters latency or other network issues when it's trying to read/write to a sync folder (my understanding is that there's no Apple API to notify 1Password when a network drive is no longer available like there is for removable (USB) drives). We have more information about that in our Folder sync guide.

Hopefully that answers your questions, but please let us know if you need anything else. We're always happy to help! :)

ppd

Thx for the quit answer, that was all i want to know, so in a few days you have some more customers ;)

Drew_AG

Awesome!! You're very welcome @ppd, and we look forward to you and your other team members becoming 1Password customers! We're here for you if you have more questions or need any help. :)

ppd

We have bought 3 Versions of 1password over the Mac App Store. As i told you before, we share the vault over a local network folder.

Generally it worked, but always somebody quit and rejoin the network, he must set the sync path of the folder again...

I test it today to be sure, you get one message, that the sync path is lost and after that you never get a reminder "still have no connection to the synced folder*** or something like that. The Setting is lost and you don´t know if your important new passwords are synced with your team or only stored in your local vault. Why 1password don´t remember the last configured path?

I hope you understand, that this, if there is no solution for the problem, is a clear limitation of the desired workflow.

Hopefully you can help me with this problem.

AGAlumB

@ppd: Indeed, 1Password isn't designed to continue trying to sync with a nonexistent location. 1Password stops trying to sync when the path is invalid, otherwise you're thinking it's syncing successfully, and it can't. 1Password isn't a network app.

That's one area where something like rsync (which Drew suggested above) or ChronoSync is important. If you're syncing with a network folder, you're going to get disconnected. However, if you're syncing with a local folder on each machine, these types of software can synchronize the data from one computer to the next. I hope this helps! :)