Can we use RoboCopy to synchronize data?

Bobby Deol

7/14/24, 8:10 AM

I have a project where we are moving from on-premise file share to AWS FSx. I need your suggestion on data synchronization. I decided to use the RoboCopy tool to copy the data. We need to also copy data with file permissions. I'm using the command below:

ROBOCOPY <source> <target> /MIR /SEC /SECFIX /LOG+:<log_file>

According to the plan, we are copying all the data to FSx. As there are some processes that generate frequent data in the on-premise drive, we have to synchronize the data again. So if I run RoboCopy tool again, will take the same time as the time it took for the actual data copy. What is the best way to synchronize the delta data?

And another question if I may ask. So the data is compressed on on-premise share. And FSx for Windows file share I think doesn't have compression, deduplication is there. So can RoboCopy data from compressed to uncompressed?

Thank you.

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networking

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TomTom

7/14/24, 9:19 AM

"I need your suggestion on data synchronization. " - nope. Requests for product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they attract low quality, opinionated and spam answers, and the answers become obsolete quickly. Instead, describe the business problem you are working on, the research you have done, and the steps taken so far to solve it. Not going to do your job and recommend you a tool or not. Also, the other questions (hey, remember, ONE PER QUESTION) are simple "RTFM" questions.

Greg Askew

7/14/24, 12:30 PM

Robocopy has been widely used for data migrations for over 25 years. It is so commonly used, it was made a native Windows binary and follows the Windows support lifecycle. Yes, it can be used to synchronize data.

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Zac67

7/14/24, 11:04 AM

So if I run RoboCopy tool again, will take the same time as the time it took for the actual data copy.

No, it's not, unless there's a problem with timestamps. Robocopy skips identical files but it needs to walk the entire tree.

What is the best way to synchronize the delta data?

Product recommendations are explicitly off topic here, unfortunately. On searching, you should find many solutions, many of which are more efficient and much more real-time than robocopy.

So can RoboCopy data from compressed to uncompressed?

Yes, compression is transparent on the file level. Accordingly, robocopy can also copy from compressed to compressed - which might be inefficient: decompression causes CPU load, communication is uncompressed (inefficient for WAN), and data needs to be recompressed at the destination (CPU load). There are solutions that maintain compression across replication.

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