Use FFS to P2P sync an entire office

[swaldner]

I recently solved a common problem using FreeFileSync in such a cool and
useful way that I feel obligated to share it. My company has several physical
locations that utilize Outlook to access pop3 mail. The problem...how to
backup all these PST files. Some are gigabytes in size and the offices only
have broadband internet so copying them to a central server or cloud storage
was out of the question. Here's my free solution: use FreeFileSync to make a
"local cloud" or, as Microsoft calls it, a Peer to Peer Mesh. The basic
components are:

1. A nightly scheduled task on each computer runs a script that saves all changed PST files to a shared c:\ShareGroup folder on the local computer. The pst files are saved in a path like this c:\sharegroup\computerName\userName\pstName\pstName_dateTime.pst. The script takes care of culling old copies...we keep one weeks worth of backups. It also uses the volume shadow copy service so we can backup open pst files.

2. A scheduled task runs another script every xx minutes. This script does the following:

a. Looks for other clients on the same subnet to share with.

b. When it finds one, it inserts itself into a linked list with its new
partner.

c. It starts up FreeFileSync with a two-way sync relationship with that
partner.

d. On subsequent runs, it simply verifies that its partner is still alive. If
not, it goes to step (a).

The beauty of using FreeFileSync in a linked list of peers is that you get
file synchronization up and down the list. An automatic P2P Mesh without the
silly Microsoft limitations! All PST files are backed up to all the peers.
Lose a hard drive? No problem! Replace and copy the PST from one of the other
computers in the office.

If you have a similar problem to solve, I would be happy to provide my
vbscripts to you. If you have scripting experience, they would be easy to
modify for your particular scenario.

[swaldner]

Oh, it's a secure solution too because the scheduled tasks run under an admin
account and only that account has access to the share created on the member
computers.