Real-time file replication

Hello,
We're running IIS5 on 2 Windows 2000 Advanced Servers. One of our sites is
being load balanced (through a Foundry load balancer). This site handles a
large amount of traffic & file updates on one server must be updated in
real-time to the other server. Currently, we use Peersync to replicate the
data. This works fairly well but we're having intermittent problems with it
(too numerous to mention, tech support has been no help, etc). As a result,
I'm looking at alternatives. I'm aware of products like Veritas' Volume
replication but the cost is too high. I'm curious what other people are
using. I thought about using robocopy but I don't think it can do real-time
updates. Any freebees out there? Scripts?
Here's something else I thought of:
What if we map a drive (on both servers) to a 3rd server that actually holds
the wwwroot information? This way I wouldn't need to replicate the data
between the 2 original web servers. I realize that this is
single-point-failure (thank god for backups) but what if the third machine
was kick-ass (SCSI hard drives, fiber network card, etc). Is this feasible?
I know this is mouthful but ANY advice/suggestions are greatly appreciated.
TIA
Regards,
Veets

"Veets" <dddetrretsssadasy RemoveThis @hotnospmamail.com> wrote in message
news:euTHNLMlDHA.2772@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
 > Hello,
 > We're running IIS5 on 2 Windows 2000 Advanced Servers. One of our sites is
 > being load balanced (through a Foundry load balancer). This site handles a
 > large amount of traffic & file updates on one server must be updated in
 > real-time to the other server. Currently, we use Peersync to replicate the
 > data. This works fairly well but we're having intermittent problems with
it
 > (too numerous to mention, tech support has been no help, etc). As a
result,
 > I'm looking at alternatives. I'm aware of products like Veritas' Volume
 > replication but the cost is too high. I'm curious what other people are
 > using. I thought about using robocopy but I don't think it can do
real-time
 > updates.

It can't.

 > Any freebees out there? Scripts?

DFS/FRS is the only "free" / real time way I know of.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311398" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311398</a>

 > Here's something else I thought of:
 > What if we map a drive (on both servers) to a 3rd server that actually
holds
 > the wwwroot information? This way I wouldn't need to replicate the data
 > between the 2 original web servers. I realize that this is
 > single-point-failure (thank god for backups) but what if the third machine
 > was kick-ass (SCSI hard drives, fiber network card, etc). Is this
feasible?
 > I know this is mouthful but ANY advice/suggestions are greatly
appreciated.

That's actually a reasonable idea. See:
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/deploy/confeat/RemStorg.asp" target="_blank">http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/pro...chnol/w</a>

--
Tom Kaminski IIS MVP
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.iistoolshed.com/" target="_blank">http://www.iistoolshed.com/</a> - tools, scripts, and utilities for running IIS
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