Copy verification and Compare issue

[d033e22ae348aeb5660fc2140aec35850c4da997]

Backup Creations is a seperate site that offers on line backup solution for users. Our service uses SuperFlexible as its backup software with our service. Our service uses a couple of different technologies to form the complete package.

We have partnered with SuperFlexible as we can help assist with Support of basic questions and they can help support of basic questions for our service as well since the underlining piece uses SuperFlexible. Our engineers have devised our backup solution from the ground up to provide what most other companies can not provide.

The idea of the remote service doing md5 checksums is a great idea but is not yet currently available. It may be in the future but I can not speak for what SuperFlexible would add to thier product. It would be very welcomed by many. V5 is a great addion of features and we at BackupCreations are exicted for it's release.

As for your questions, if the remote service is off or unavailable i beleive it will eventually time out and process the job as if it was not there, but I have never waited that long. I just tried to verify it for you but it as been running for 1700 seconds and it is not following the time and retry settings. So for a simple reboot it should not be a problem, long term outage, I am not sure.

The moved files compares the time, date, size and file names if eveything matchs it moves them, saving bandwidth.

The verified copy, copies the file back to the source computer and checks for an exact match the same way the moved files does to day. Only the partial file updating does an md5 check sum in SFFS today.

The copy process in exact mirror is just as good if not better then doing a copy in Windows. I have yet in all my years have had windows copy something and say it was correct and it was not, unless it got corrupt shortly after due to hard malfunctions. Copying over internet protocols like an http download are different this is easy to have a corruption because there is almost no checking at all unless you use an app like SuperFlexible that checks it afterwords.

In staright copy mode is where you may have to worry because if it sees the same file is there then it skips it and you may not want that.

I do not want you to be confused with our solution with what SuperFlebile offers because as I said before it is a combination of a few techologies that make up our whole solution. I can promise you that using the SuperFlexible software you are using today is super reliable. I have used this in many enterprise customers of ours and it has yet to fail me. The md5 check sum is a great added bonus but not available yet. Please consider the solution you are using very reliable as we do it all the time. I hope that helps.

[d033e22ae348aeb5660fc2140aec35850c4da997]

The remote service did finally time out and continue after some 2000 seconds. I did not see when but it continued as if it was not selected.

[syncing_feeling]

Thanks for your clarifications and follow up.

The remote service did finally time out and continue after some 2000 seconds. I did not see when but it continued as if it was not selected.

So do you mean that it reverted to trying to perform the necessary functions directly as if the Remote Service was not configured and set up? For example, if SFFS was waiting for the Remote Service to provide a Remote File listing then it'd eventually give up waiting and just try to parse the file list directly? I guess in the case of Zip Packages it would have to error out though because SFFS wouldn't be able to unzip the Zip Packages remotely without the Remote Service, I would think.

[d033e22ae348aeb5660fc2140aec35850c4da997]

Yes it ran the job as normal as if the remote service was not configured. I do not use the zipping piece so I will need to test and get back to you. I have found in previous tests that if you use multi file copying at the same time located on the files tab, it was faster depending on what kind of files your are copying. Many files can't compress too much more, so there will be very little savings and then you loose time waiting for the zipping process to happen and then to unzip. You might want to check by running it once without that and compare. I copy 3-5 files at once any more and it will start to slow down unless you are on a very fast line.

[superflexible]

Yes, after a timeout, the program will try to perform the operations directly without the help of the Remote Service. Obviously, ZIP Packages will not be unpacked. But there won't be an error either, because the program assumes that the Remote Service may take much longer to unpack them and doesn't wait for that to be completed anyway.

For "Partial File Updating", you can choose not to revert to a full copy if the remote service is missing.

Thanks for all the ideas, I will put some of it in 5.0 and some of it a bit later.

[superflexible]

The new version 5, build 42 can now use remotely generated MD5 checksums to verify uploaded files. If the server supports it, it will automatically use MD5 (i.e. some FTP servers as well as Amazon S3). If the server does not support it, you can use our ExtremeSync Remote Service to generate the checksums. You need to install the latest Remote Service though.

The settings related to verification and MD5 are on the Files tab sheet in combination with the tab sheet Comparison->More.

[syncing_feeling]

That is awesome! Thank you so much!! These are very cool features!

I will begin trying this out over the next several days and also hopefully this weekend.

I just installed it to have a look at the settings. A few clarifying questions:

1) If I want to use Binary Comparison and use MD5 checksums generated by the ExtremeSync Remote Service I would, on the Comparison->More tab, check "Binary Comparison Of Existing Files While Building File List (SLOW)" and then (in my case) check "Right Side" for "Use Remotely Generated MD5 Checksums For Comparisons On". That all seems pretty straightforward.

2) If I have a profile where I don't want/need to use Binary Comparison (eg, the files on the Right Side will not be changed other than by the profile), but I do want the ExtremeSync Remote Service to verify copied files with MD5 checksums would I then use the following: on the Files tab, check "Verfiy copied files", and then do I also need to, on the Comparison->More tab check "Use Remotely Generated MD5 Checksums For Comparisons On"? I'm just wanting to be sure I'm understanding correctly.

Thanks!

[superflexible]

Hello,

yes that is all correct!

Cheers,
Tobias

[superflexible]

and then do I also need to, on the Comparison->More tab check "Use Remotely Generated MD5 Checksums For Comparisons On"

Yes. That way you avoid having to redownload the file for verification.

[syncing_feeling]

Great! Thanks! That makes sense; I just wanted to be sure.

Thanks!