SVN synchronization between multiple repositories

Question

We are using SVN and we have on-site and off-shore teams. SVN repository is currently in on-shore premises which means that connectivity from off-shore to SVN is very slow. We would like to setup and SVN at off-shore too. We would require the two SVN repositories to be in-sync. What would be the best practice to do this, any third-party product required?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Here you will need to setup an SVN master-slave setup.

Basically:

• The slave server has his own local repository and can serve local read requests
• Write requests to the slave server have to get forwarded to the master server (using WebDAV proxy or post-commit hooks, I would go with the second one)
• The slave repository has to be synchronised with the server's repository (using svnsync)

This blog post is a good starting point if you prefer to use WebDAV, while this post will show you how to setup a synchronisation using post-commit hooks.

Note that you will also have to modify the default pre-revprop-change hook script on your slave server as svnsync will need to modify some properties directly.

Answer 2

Since you asked about third party products, WANdisco Subversion MultiSite is a third party product that uses true active-active replication to provide seamless HADR and global multi-site for Subversion repositories. Writes and reads are always to the local, LAN repo. Our customers come to us from svnsync deployments as described above because they want performance, scalability, and data safety beyond that svnsync supplies.

DVCS does not fix the WAN clone or replication issue on its own.

Disclaimer: I am an employee of WANdisco plc

Answer 3

VisualSVN Server 3.0 (Enterprise Edition) introduces Multisite Repository Replication feature which follows classic master/slave replication architecture. The feature is based on VDFS (VisualSVN Distributed File System) technology that allows bidirectional, automatic and transparent replication of data between multiple remote sites:

• Both slave and master repositories are writable and act like a regular Subversion repository from the enduser's standpoint.

• Works out-of-the-box. You are only required to perform minimal permission management for repository replication and adjust firewall rules,

• Replication is done automatically and transparently.

See "Getting started with Multisite Repository Replication".