Limited Bandwidth Configuration

[freind]

Hello,

For the past couple of days I have been reviewing the possibility of using Alfresco in our production environment. Our system would require two geographically separated servers capable of searching each others database. I understand this configuration is possible using NFS, however the bandwidth between the locations is quite limited. As such, we would require two local data stores capable of sharing a search index and only using bandwidth when a specific file is required from the other location. An NFS filesystem would simply require too much bandwidth. Is this architecture supported? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Regards,

Freind

[afaust]

Hello,

for such a scenario, Alfresco specifically designed the Replication feature. It is not advisable, to have two seperate servers access each others databases, backend stores and index directly (i.e. without proper authentication / authorization integration, which would be circumvented in such a scenario) unless they belong to the same cluster (and invalidate each other caches on modification). instead you would periodically replicate the content that needs to be accessible on the other geographical location and each request would then only be served by the local data stores (including the replicated content). Replication supports delta transfers, so you only use bandwidth if something has actually been changed. You are free to configure different replication schedules for different content structures, so you can make sure you are as up-to-date as possible.

Of course, this way, more content that might actually be requested is transferred. But this buys you the benefit of being able to serve the content right away instead of having the user wait for it while it is being transferred. And all your integration work is that much simpler…

Regards
Axel