SyncBreeze Enterprise Clustered Configurations

SyncBreeze Enterprise allows one to setup active-active and active-passive, fault-tolerant clustered configurations. The user is provided with the ability to monitor a file synchronization server via the network and automatically activate a backup file synchronization server when the primary server goes offline. In order to be able to setup a clustered configuration, the user needs to install SyncBreeze Enterprise on at least two servers.

Let's assume that we have a primary server synchronizing files between two network shares and we need to configure a backup server to automatically start synchronizing the same pair of network shares when the primary server will go offline. In the simplest case, the user needs to save two pre-defined configurations on the backup server with the first one representing the normal operation mode and the second one representing the backup operation mode, which should be activated when the primary server will go offline. Now, the user needs to open the SyncBreeze cluster configuration dialog on the backup server and specify the host name or an IP address of the primary server to monitor, the name of the backup configuration to use when the primary server goes offline and the normal configuration, which should be activated when the primary server goes back online.

The normal and the backup configurations may contain any number of file synchronization commands synchronizing any number of disks, directories or network shares. In order to create the normal configuration, setup all the required file synchronization commands, open the configurations management dialog, press the 'Add' button and specify a unique configuration name. The current SyncBreeze configuration will be saved with the specified name and it will be possible to use the saved configuration on the SyncBreeze cluster configuration dialog. In the same way, create the backup configuration and save it with a different configuration name. Now, open the SyncBreeze cluster configuration dialog, enter the name of the primary server to monitor and select the backup and normal configurations.

In order to setup an active-passive configuration, the backup server may be configured to use an empty configuration (without any file synchronization commands) as the normal configuration and automatically switch to the backup configuration with file synchronization commands when the primary server goes offline. In order to continuously keep an up-to-date configuration of the primary server on the backup server, SyncBreeze Enterprise provides the ability to automatically sync the configuration of the primary server (including all file synchronization commands) on the backup server as a saved product configuration.

In order to enable automatic synchronization of the configuration of the primary server with a saved configuration on the backup server, connect to the primary server using the SyncBreeze client GUI application, select the menu 'Tools - Sync Configuration', enable automatic synchronization of the product configuration, specify the name of the saved configuration on the backup server and enter the host name or an IP address of the backup server. The configuration of the primary server will be continuously synchronized to the backup server and when the primary server will go offline, the backup server will automatically activate the latest configuration saved on the backup server.

In addition, SyncBreeze Enterprise provides a large number of advanced options allowing one to control the primary server monitoring frequency, the switch-over timeout and the switch-back timeout. Also, the user is provided with the ability to send E-Mail notifications when the primary server goes offline and save SyncBreeze cluster log files in a user-specified directory. In order to access the advanced clustering options, press the 'Advanced Options' button located on the SyncBreeze cluster configuration dialog.