We currently have an umbraco installation which is going to be load balanced over 4 servers. DFS seems to require a domain controller (which we dont have). So we have to resort to third-party tools for the file replication.
Currently we're testing File Replication Pro, it seems to work but it's a bit expensive ($500 per server).
We've also tried PeerSync, that also seems to work but is a tad slower than FRP and also expensive ($2000 for the enterprise edition with 5 connections).
Currently we're steering towards FRP, however I'd like to make sure there are no other alternatives (perferably cheaper ;)).
After testing File Replication Pro we dropped it, on several occasions it failed to sync files correctly. Luckely we had this issue within the trial period. According to FRP it was due to the number of files/directories.
Eventually we opted to write our own sync program, took me a bit over 8 hours to write and implement. It's a one way sync though, so we forced the umbraco backend on the main server. But I think our sync program could probably be expanded to become two way mirror without too much work, just didn't want any hassle with conflicts.
And even though our own sync program uses the same underlying API as FRP (FileSystemWatcher's), our implementation didn't have any issues with the number of files :) Perhaps I should start selling the program ;)
If we had to buy a program though, it would probably be PeerSync. But it's hard to find dealer for the software. It's almost like those guys don't want to sell their software ^^
Load Balancing - Which replication software?
We currently have an umbraco installation which is going to be load balanced over 4 servers. DFS seems to require a domain controller (which we dont have). So we have to resort to third-party tools for the file replication.
Currently we're testing File Replication Pro, it seems to work but it's a bit expensive ($500 per server).
We've also tried PeerSync, that also seems to work but is a tad slower than FRP and also expensive ($2000 for the enterprise edition with 5 connections).
Currently we're steering towards FRP, however I'd like to make sure there are no other alternatives (perferably cheaper ;)).
So what other alternatives are available?
Jeremy - did you ever reach a solution for this? Any recommendation?
we have a very similar sounding set-up and are trying to narrow it down.
thanks
After testing File Replication Pro we dropped it, on several occasions it failed to sync files correctly. Luckely we had this issue within the trial period. According to FRP it was due to the number of files/directories.
Eventually we opted to write our own sync program, took me a bit over 8 hours to write and implement. It's a one way sync though, so we forced the umbraco backend on the main server. But I think our sync program could probably be expanded to become two way mirror without too much work, just didn't want any hassle with conflicts.
And even though our own sync program uses the same underlying API as FRP (FileSystemWatcher's), our implementation didn't have any issues with the number of files :) Perhaps I should start selling the program ;)
If we had to buy a program though, it would probably be PeerSync. But it's hard to find dealer for the software. It's almost like those guys don't want to sell their software ^^
Jeremy,
Sounds like a package you could release smell that karma ;-}
Regards
Ismail
@Jeremy - thanks for the info. we have the admin on one server, so one way id fine for us. still looking at Peersync and standard DFS
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