The Configuration Subscription feature allows you to synchronize a publisher configuration over multiple ORF installations. This is useful if you manage multiple ORF servers and do not want to update the configuration of each instance one-by-one every time something needs to be changed.
ORF calls the server which has the configuration to be synchronized a publisher, while servers who pull the configuration from the publisher are called subscribers.
The subscriber fetches the configuration from the publisher, then polls it once per minute to check whether the publisher configuration has been changed. If it has, it retrieves the new configuration and updates itself. If no changes have been made or the synchronization is prevented by something, the subscriber will continue using its current configuration till the next successful sync attempt.
Upon successful synchronization all settings are overwritten by the publisher configuration on the subscribers by default, but as this could be problematic in some scenarios, you can configure exceptions: this is called localization, i.e., when you force a setting to be permanent (and editable) on the local subscriber, and ignore the setting propagated by the publisher.
You can localize specific settings (e.g., which tests to run, or what do with blacklisted emails) and file paths (e.g., where to store the logs and reports). The first are called local features, the latter are called local paths. You can read more about these in the Local Features and Local Paths topics.
The publisher server should have the Remote Access feature enabled, and the subscriber server should be listed as an allowed host (see Allowed Hosts and Services).