Shared home directories with local duplication

I have a couple Linux computers which are all in the same network. Currently, I use rsync to copy my dotfiles and the like to each machine every couple of days from the master computer. Ideally, I would like this to happen automatically. The problem is that I would also like to have local duplication of the files. So a plain NFS or SMB mounted /home from my home server would give me really bad performance (like 3 MB/s). Duplication would serve as a physical backup as well. So far, I have thought of the following: - Using rsync at the clients so that they pull the latest data into their home directory. This overwrites local changes and is not ideal. - Use unison in a similar setup, such that each client syncs alls the files with the server in the background. Conflicts might happen, and I am not sure whether they are handled well. In the end, I would like to have local cache of the network drive. So writes are sent to the server and reads check whether the version is the latest one and use the local copy if so. Is there any software (or software stack) that does this?