rsync anti-FUD

[Stephane Paltani]

Hello,

Paul Nendick wrote:
> 
> I'm working on a commercial project that would benefit immensely from
> the use of rsync.  However, I cannot convince management that rsync is a
> worthy tool due to the rote "it's shareware, it's not supported" FUD.
> 
> Are there any documented, corportate users of rsync? Testimonials?  In
> short, how do I drag this risk-averse group out of the FTP age into the
> rsync present?

Looks like you have Dilbertian managers!

I can propose a billion-dollar NASA project called Chandra as a
testimonial (OK, most of the money does not go into the archive!).

We have a primary archive with 1.4 TB and more than 5 million files.
We use rsync to maintain two separate mirrors, which contain
specific parts of the data (respectively 0.7 and 0.4 TB). Using rsync
reduced manual operations to almost nothing, which allows us to
synchronize the mirrors in close-to-real time. An enormous advantage
is that rsync automatically propagates changes on already transferred
files, so we do not need to fix things 3 times. In addition, some of
these files are well over 100MB, and just a few bytes have to cross
the ocean to get them fixed. These files contain, by the way, some of
the finest observations in astrophysics, and have therefore a huge
scientific importance.

Also, (I know this won't work...) rsync is better supported than
most (all?) commercial softwares. There is an active mailing list,
frequent releases, and a very large user base.

Note also that rsync is genuine free software. I would have much less
confidence in a shareware.

Good luck!
Stephane