Distributing Large Files - Implementation Part 1

This post is related to my previous post about distributing large files http://murzal-arsya.blogspot.com/2011/11/distributing-large-files.html.

Finally I implemented my distribution strategy as I explained in my previous post. Let me give a little bit info about the infrastructure.

1 Server:
Brand/Type: IBM System x3650 M3
OS: Centos 6
Service: Samba
NIC: 2 Gigabit

1 Switch: HP Procurve 1810 24g (Gigabit)

10 Clients:
Brand/Type: HP Pavilion HPE
OS: Windows 7
Apps: QGIS
NIC: 1 Gigabit


I have samba configured as shared storage. Within the share folder I put the large image files to be distributed to the clients. My strategy is creating a chain distribution, from the Server to PC-01, PC-01 to PC-02, and so on, until PC-10. I choose robocopy for its simplicity and it does the job well.
So, I created a batch file

Since I need to access the shared folder, I need to make sure that the connection could be established using correct user for authentication. In order to do that, before I run robocopy, I use net use command for authenticating.
>net use \\SERVER\share_images /USER:user1 password1
then I could execute robocopy with something like the following:
>robocopy /E /PURGE /COPY:DAT \\SERVER\share_images C:\images

The most ideal way to trigger the synchronization is when there is change in each share folder, and queuing the sync processes when there are multiple changes detected. It is beyond the scope of this post.