Does real-time(or close to) syncing exist?

[usuf]

Hello everyone,

I am new to Alfresco, and am having problems trying to find information/guides on configuring 2 separate Alf installations to "sync" their information, so that both databases/content/indexes are the same.  I have been searching topics like replication & clustering for hours on end and I'm still unsure if either of these features will give me what I need. Finding a howto or setup document for either replication or clustering was a pain in itself, and I still don't have anything that's definitive. 
Does Alf have a built-in feature that can accomplish this? Having only 1 database is not an option.

Heres the deal: 2 offices with Alf 3.2 Community installed at each location. When Office#1 changes or creates a file, I would like Office#2 to be able to see it & have access to it soon after it is altered/created.

So far as I've seen, my only option is to do a 2-way rsync of the Databases, Content Stores, & Lucene Indexes. This solution is undesirable & I've read that rsyncing the Indexes while Alf is running will corrupt them anyways.

If someone could explain how I could accomplish this, it would be greatly appreciated. Posting obscure pages on how clustering & replication works(and not how to set them up) is wasted on me, I have read them all and still don't know how to solve this issue.

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks!

[mrogers]

http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18381&p=60526

Replication is not supported.

[usuf]

Thank you for your answer mrogers. Is it possible to accomplish my goals with clustering & a replicating content store with a shared content store? Do I need to have the databases & indexes (cashes) up to date with the shared content store for this to work?

As a new user I am finding that there is a lack of setup instruction documents for the many great Alf features…

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Cluster_Configuration_V2.1.3_and_Later#Simple_repository_clustering

This tells me about the clustered server, which I see as a viable solution, but it doesn't say how to go about setting one up!!

I'm a newbie so any comments or suggestions are appreciated, thanks!

[usuf]

I have found a way to more or less, do what I originally stated in the first post.

This solution is for a simple 2 cluster machine setup running 3.2 Community.

One machine is the "host" machine that has a shared database, the other is the "slave". Though I originally wanted to have 2 individual databases that were "synced" in real time, I realized that it is either impossible, or too much work to even bother with.

On the slave in alfresco-global.properties, I set db.host=206.151.169.85 (example) which is the host machine.

To sync the content stores I created and mounted 2 shared nfs network directories (1 on each server). On both machines in replicating-content-services-context.xml I set the localdriveContentStore to /opt/Alfresco/alf_data/contentstore & the networkContentstore to /mnt/alf-data-host(slave)/contentstore .

Create an ehcache.xml file from the sample that is given but do not alter anything within.

In repository.properties I set index.recovery.mode=FULL ,  index.tracking freq=Once every five seconds  & alf.cluster.name=TESTCLUSTER

Once I started up Alfresco I was able to log into the slave machine, create a document in guest home, and have it show up on the host machines guest home (logged in as admin).

It has taken many hours to get this far. If anyone can see a way to improve upon what I have, any extra advice is appreciated.