Technical Overview

Replicator is designed for a client/server environment. The Replicator program is installed on a Solaris, Linux, or Mac OS X server and replicates files from a number of clients to the server at specific times or time intervals. Clients can be any machine running an FTP server, or that shares files through the SMB protocol. The majority of computers ship with one of these services either available or enabled by default (free utilities are available for most platforms for those machines without FTP or SMB services). SMB is the native file sharing protocol of all Windows machines, while FTP is the most common file sharing service on Unix platforms, including Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X. By utilizing these industry standards, the setup and administration of Replicator is simplified, as individual client machines are often already configure and therefore, only the Replicator server must be setup and administrated to replicate files.

The limiting factor to the number of clients Replicator can support is the amount of disk space attached to the server. The minimum amount of disk space is equal to the size of the data to replicate. However, because of Replicator's optional archiving feature, more space is often needed as multiple versions of files are kept on the server according to the number of archives the administrator wishes to keep. Multiple inexpensive servers with limited storage can be used as Replicator servers through a tiered approach, in which each server replicates a small workgroup of machines, and several servers replicate other Replicator servers. The tiered approach also allows Replicator to easily scale along with it's environment.