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File Sync Software - Netware Based

Hello all...

We are looking for a 'sync' software that runs on a Netware server (6.5) that will sync/copy files from a volume on one server to another.

There are a bunch of them around that are Windows based (Peersync, SyncUP, etc...). However, we need to copy files (on a scheduled basis) from one Netware server to another.

We can, but would rather not, have a Windows PC as a 'middleman'. We would rather a solution that runs on the server itself.

Is there such a thing? There are products from Novell that talk about 'clustering', etc. but we don't want to implement a 'big' (read: expensive and complicated) Netware-provided solution.

Thanks,

TN

PsiCop

Not sure what's "expensive" about NetWare's clustering. NetWare v6.x, and OES, includes a 2-node cluster license. No additional licensing charges. Your main expense or complication is the shared storage, but before you balk at that, consider the hidden expenses of some Rube Goldberg setup to do the same thing.

If you insist on cobbling something together, then as I recall, NetWare v6.5 includes rsync (or you can download the NLM separately). There have been a number of articles on Cool Solutions (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions) about rsync - I know the guy who writes most of them, he's pretty sharp. There is also this AppNote --> http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/654.html

PsiCop

Another article is at --> http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/658.html

pgm554

Clustering in NW6.5 is included out of the box for 2 nodes.

As for expensive HW,iSCSI is a cheap, no brainer, method of shared storage.

You can take ANY x86 based system that meets the spec on a Linux or NW server and turn it into a shared storage device using iSCSI.

What kind of problem are you trying to solve exactly?

ShineOn

Rsync is included with NW6.5/OES as part of the BranchOffice "product." It's not really meant for synchronizing data between local servers, and will not (at least last time I checked) sync any trustee information. Novell doesn't support it for local data sync, probably because it doesn't "do" trustees. If you do a scheduled sync with Rsync, you'd want to also schedule a cron job to export the trustee data, sync that file over, and then re-apply the trustee data at the target server. Two-way sync is kind-of problematic in light of that.

Also, last time I checked, you >can< use certain NAS devices as a cluster volume rather than going the SAN route, which also can be pretty cheap, and since the cluster services you get with NetWare 6.5/OES does not require identical servers, you can have your "main" cluster node on your new, big, heavy-hitter server box and your "failover" node on an old desktop PC, if you >want< to. Or, have one cluster node on the NetWare kernel and the other on OES/Linux.

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ShineOn

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tnorman

ASKER

Thanks for the input on this. I should have elaborated further, saying I wanted to sync the contents of about four servers back to one. That TaskMaster looks like it should do the trick.

Thanks again,

TN