If you've got 5 hosts, Each host should connect to 3 other hosts for a mesh network wherein any node can fail and the others remain online without requiring every host be connected to every other host.

Ok, But what is a/the recommended replication setup? It depends on the requirements if availability but also on the bandwidth between the loaction, hardware. If I configure such setup, it is much more complex like a circle. The hardware and bandwidth using for each server increases a lot.

We also want use one load balancer (one vrrp pair) in each location. So each master has additionally a few ro slaves!

The application separates write and read access to two vips on the load balancer. If the load balancer can't reach the local master, all further request (ro and rw) are directed to the closest remote location and LDAP-Servers.

I also saw the last mail from Howard in the openldap-devel ml regarding "ITS#7052" and ITS#6024.

So I'm absolutely unsure, what I should configure! Are there recommendations or practical experiences?

If any one host should be considdered a true master,  you're better off with a standard star topology where all updates go to the master.

You mean "If only one host ..."? then I understand this recommendation

Thanks Meike