Mirror directory between windows hosts

Question

I'm looking secure way to one-way mirror directory between windows hosts over the internet.

Host A - Has directory with files. Should run some sort of server on single open port X. Everything else is blocked at firewall level that I don't have access to. (Tried to use Filezilla FTPS server but passive mode data-connection would not initialize, because everything else is blocked).

Host B - Windows Scheduled task should run every 5 mins some sort of client program to connect Host A and download new files (and changed files). (First thought was to use lftp.exe with mirror option)

Files are small log files. What would be most stable and preferably freeware/opensource solution for this?

Is this in a corporate network in which you are an administrator? How come you have the limitation of the single port? — MDMarra, Aug 16 '13 at 20:26

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 16 '13 at 18:55

0

VPN tunnel between the servers to create a secure connection.

Use SyncToy to synchronise the files, using an Echo relationship. This can be ran as a scheduled task.

answered Aug 16 '13 at 18:55

Chris McKeown

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Having no previous experience with VPN tunnels - are they stable and do they auto establish, in case tunnel disconnects? – Lauri Aug 16 '13 at 19:06
Yes they are stable and yes they can auto reconnect. – chewbakka Aug 16 '13 at 19:33

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 16 '13 at 19:00

I believe you mean something like rsync.

Usually you call it like

rsync -a --delete src destination

(careful with --delete: it removes all files from the destination no longer found in src)

In this case you'd put a scheduled task on host A to update the destination B. But you can also use B and pull files from a using this method I guess.

I believe there are rsync ports for Windows.

Run like this to do a simulation

rsync -avn --delete src destination

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 17 '13 at 00:00

For Windows, GoodSync would do this quite well (it now have a server option), but it is not free (and you would probably need two licenses in this case).

Another relatively easy to understand solution is to setup a webserver and configure it to serve on that port. You can use IIS if your Windows version have it or Apache/nginx if you're able to configure it. There are many client options for this, you can use web-archievers or some scripting with wget/curl. Alternatively, you can install WebDAV on the web server and mount a drive over http(s). Most sync tools (or similar) will be able to work with the web mount like normal local drive.

A third-option is to run OpenVPN and you'll have a full-access connection via VPN; however, OpenVPN is most fiddly to configure.

Another option is SSTP VPN which requires a copy of Windows Server 2008: you just need to setup the system HTTPS listener to be on that specific port. (This configuration is however not supported by M$.) All other VPN types requires other ports and protocols to pass through the firewall.

If you're courageous, you can also look at IPv6 NAT-traversal solutions, but additional security consideration will be necessary.

Mirror directory between windows hosts

3 Answers3