Hi All,

We have 2 servers (lets call them linuxfs01 and linuxfs02) and they are both hosting files for windows clients using Samba.
Both servers are openSUSE 11.3 x64 with plenty of storage etc.
We have the need to keep both of these servers in sync with each other meaning that the data that is on one side is always available on the other side as a failover solution.
Before anyone says the words RSync or Unison, I have already been down these roads, infact, for the best part of the last year unison has been running quite happily (in 1 way mode) untill it's database corrupted. now with ~500GB of remote data to read and propogate the required changes it's becomming a challenge to the point where the data has not syncronised for at least 3weeks where it is still polling the data to migrate.

I want to take the option to re-evaluate my datasync requirements now and am considering the following setups:
1 -
Create an SSHFS link between the 2 servers and replicate over this.

2 -
Create a 3rd "sync" system and setup that to replicate the data and connect via SSHFS to the other 2 servers and using FreeFileSync to keep the data is continual check.

3 -
Create a 3rd "sync" system and setup that to replicate the data and connect via NFS shares to the other 2 servers and using FreeFileSync to keep the data is continual check.

I have a feeling that option 3 is the best route to use as that way I can install a Ubuntu system to perform the data sync knowing that .deb packages are being compiled faster than on opensuse, also I am having problems with suse in that I cannot get the sync software to run accordingly.
I dont want to upgrade the 2 systems to suse 12.1 yet as they are both production machines and we cannot afford the downtime so my R&D is being done on test machines currently.

Would anyone here have a better solution that I can easily setup and use?
I do wish now that when we first built the machines I had found and setup DRBD on them that way we would have a softare Raid between the 2 physical servers over the LAN with no need to worry about the data sync.

Thank you

Do you know about DRBD? http://www.drbd.org/

GFS? http://sourceware.org/cluster/gfs/

I do know both of those and I wish now that we had implemented either of those at the time we built the one server then comissioned the second.
Unfortunately, with 500GB of data we cannot simply format the drive then reset the file system.

did you look into rsync command ?