Remote updating of wwwroot from a server

[iDenTiTy]

Hi guys,

Apologies for my absence in this thread-area. (?) :wtf:
Anyway, Here's the story..

The company I work for has servers at various clients. We (they) update all clients in a VERY uncontrlloed, ad-hoc way.

So, lets say that there are five client machines (running Server 2003, hosting a website) located worldwide.

1) We need to update them with the same version of the software.
2) The software does NOT use Webservices. Short-sighted yes, but I just started so I have very little say..

Anyway, is ther a way to update the sites centrally, that is, from our office, 'pushing' the updated website files to the remote client machines (web servers)?

 

[cornestoltz]

What about setting up a FTP server with wwwroot as the path on each server? You can then FTP in with appropriate security.

 

[iDenTiTy]

What about setting up a FTP server with wwwroot as the path on each server? You can then FTP in with appropriate security.

How would one overwrite the old files with the new ones, without stopping WWW publisher on the client servers?

 

[SilverNodashi]

This is definitely possible. What OS(s) is the server running? As said above, you could use FTP to overwrite the files in the wwwroot folder, and you don't need to restart the WWW publisher service for this

 

[Mr.Jax]

Search for DeltaCopy and also rsync (DeltaCopy is a wrapper around rsync).

It's open source, was specifically developed for this problem and works!!!

 

[FarligOpptreden]

+1 on the FTP route - the WWW-publishing service doesn't need to be restarted or even stopped while overwriting the old files. The service wil realize that new binaries are available and reload them on the first page-call after the upgrade.

BTW - what are you using for database upgrades? I'd suggest using Redgate SQL's products - you can do a database comparison between various versions of the databases and compile an executable that can be run on each server to perform the necessary changes. It really is very powerful and there isn't a product on the market that can match it.

 

[guest2013-1]

How would one overwrite the old files with the new ones, without stopping WWW publisher on the client servers?

Why would it matter? I'm not 100% sure but are you talking desktop application or web based application?

If the latter, you won't need to stop the WWW publisher at all. (or restart it for that matter)

The only thing you might want to watch out for (if it's .NET based) is caching, which you need to then restart the application pool it's running on. But usually that's not an issue.