Server replication

[Pandorasghost]

Hi there Quick question does anyone know of some free software that can replicate server data accross two servers, I have Found some software that I can pay for, but None that are free.

 

[jaybee]

Define "replicate data accross two servers". You want to replicate data from one servers local storage to another like a backup or in real time? For what purpose? Redundancy? If the later are you looking at clustering?
Need more info.

 

[Pandorasghost]

All I have been told, is that I need to find a way to compleatly replicate the data from one server to another. Perhaps in real time yes

 

[RSR]

What about robocopy? However, it does depend on the data you want to mirror.

 

[Pandorasghost]

This is what I got told

NAS1 is where the media files are uploaded to currently.
They should replicate to NAS2 for backup purposes.
But should NAS1 fail, the media will be uploaded to NAS2.
NAS2 will need to connect to NAS1 when running again to update the missing media content.

 

[Andy100]

If you want something free to copy files and folders then Robocopy is worth a look.

Pretty much anything with more functionality than that is going to cost you money.

To be honest though if you don't even know what your specific criteria are then how do you expect us to help you?

Sweeping requests from management do not a happy CIO make.

Edit: just saw your extra post. You need to find out what your recovery point objective is. Robocopy is good for overnight replication but not so good with live data.

 

[ruffneck]

Have you thought about DFSR?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb540025(VS.85).aspx

 

[Pandorasghost]

IM just doing what I can with the information that I have. But thank you. It needs to be real time, and for backup as well as redundancy.

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

If both servers are running Windows 2003 R2 or higher, you could use DFSr.

If not, you could run scheduled tasks using batch files and robocopy.

 

[J.B]

DFS was my first thought if they are windows boxes.

Think we need some info on what hardware and software are available.

 

[Pandorasghost]

Windows Server 2008 Thats all I have right now

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

So you have two servers running on Windows Server 2008.
NAS1 and NAS2.

It should just be a case of setting up DFSR replication of the folders you wish to replicate / backup.
DFSR will only copy across what has changed, so it won't spend hours sending and receiving documents that have had a single word changed.

You can schedule it to run out of hours to not impact on services, although this will need to be assessed depending on the link between the two servers (A LAN connection is sufficient, anything under 10Mbit should be reviewed).

The repointing / failover of the NAS1 server won't be handled by DFSR.

NAS2 will copy any changes made to files when the NAS1 server is brought back online. The change replication is bi-directional so there's no need to worry about concurrent users during transition.

 

[TangoSixteen]

Syncback SE is a great little program!

Works wonders, and really cheap.

Handles locked files and databases too.

Its not a proper DFS or VSS type replication, but I just mentioned it as someone else did recently too, but I lost the thread which had it in.

 

[J.B]

If both servers are running Windows 2008 then DFS is probably the easiest way forward. I seem to remember quite a good introduction video on the MS site to explain all the features of DFS.

It's really easy to configure as well

 

[ecksmen]

You may want to check DFS-R covers network attached drives, or just how the NAS's are configured. I have a sneaky feeling DFS-R only covers local drives, not networked drives but I could easily be wrong.

DFS namespaces will take care of the failover between different nodes - possibly.