[dba-Tech] The Swiss army knife of backup systems

[Gustav Brock]

Hi Jim

That's right, except that it is a *nix thing. Under Windows, it only runs in a Cygwin environment.

We did some serious testing years ago, and it failed. The simple reason is, that it gets confused by the naming conventions of Windows files and folders which are case insentitive also for "foreign" characters. It may work in an ascii-only world, but outside, no.

I mentioned before, that if you need syncing of files between locations in a Windows environment, go for the native DFS replication between servers of version 2003 R2+. 
It is rock stable as is communicates at the OS level, not the file level. This means that, say, renaming a file or moving a complete folder is just that - at all nodes - and within a second or so.

/gustav

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: dba-Tech [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] På vegne af Jim Lawrence
Sendt: 15. december 2015 21:39
Til: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
Emne: [dba-Tech] The Swiss army knife of backup systems

In the computer world, it seems one old command line program has been the ultimate data transfer application...that is "rsync". Unfortunately, the only platform that it does not run on easily is Windows. (A windows client can be created but a real Linux server has to be at the backend.):

Here is just one example of features. (There are so many more but this is a good start):

http://www.tecmint.com/rsync-local-remote-file-synchronization-commands/  

RSYNC can copy files, backup files (full/incremental)/synchronize/full-image), on a single computer, network, across the web, can fully encrypt data, within any VPN and is designed to run in unstable environments as it can recover when a communication signal is dropped. 

Below is a simple example of what it can do. (I take no credit for figuring out all the parameters as a far smart developer than I assembled the code.)

Given that you have SSH installed on all your computers...I believe it is by default on Windows10 and definitely on Apple and Linux boxes by default...and if it isn't it is very easy to do so. Assuming the the following code works:

ssh username at mydomainname -p 3333 or ssh username at 192.167.111.200 -p 3333
  
### 3333 is just the port through your router/firewall/ssh listening port. It ca  n be accessed from anywhere.

This is how to transfer a file from a server/network to a remote station/server via a secure SSH tunnel.

rsync -avz --progress ~/music/thechoir.mp3 -e "ssh -p 3333" username at mydomain:~/desktop/

Where:
 "~" just says start at the home directory...i.e. ~/music/thechoir.mp3 (get the following file from the following location.)...use a SSH tunnel: "ssh -p 3333" using credentials and data directed towards specific remote computer location: username at mydomain:~/desktop/ 
 
Hope this helps someone. This of course is just a small sample of what can be done.  

Jim