What is the best architecture for automating scheduled file synchronization / transfers for backup purposes in a windows server environment across either a LAN or the internet?
I would like to automate nightly (or perhaps hourly) file synchronization / backups as a windows service.
I have tried many of the commercial synch app solutions but I've had annoyances with every single one.
Short of coding my own VBS scripts to take care of this, anyone have any scenarios or software to recommend for a permanent solution to this ever-present problem?
Did you try SyncBack? It allows you to synchronize or backup using FTP or network shares transfers, ZIP, filters, HTML and email logs, scheduling etc.
We use both commercial and free versions on ours servers for web application deployment/synchronization, log file transfers and backup-to-disk jobs.
If you have the expertise, writing your own script is not such a bad idea. It offers the possibility to do it just the way you would like it.
On the other hand, there are countless solutions out there and there should also be one that might suit you.
My personal favourite is rsync. Even that comes in different versions for Windows. Just googling for "rsync windows" shows a lot of results. "delta copy" looks like a usable wrapper for the rsync program for instance.
You basically have to choose and test. And don't forget to test recovery as well.
Rsync is good stuff. There's also unison, which is nominally a bidirectional sync program, but can be set to always resolve conflicts in one direction, effectively yielding a one-way sync.