Resilio Connect solves one of the most frequent tasks for today’s admins - mass delivering of data to multiple remote workstations at a time. In this example use case we’ll see how to deliver an accounting software update to computers and moreover, remotely install that update.
Resilio Connect does this through a Distribution Job. A Distribution Job is a scheduled job designed to distribute data from a server to selected agents. This job looks at the files in a selected source folder and delivers them to remote agents. Once done, the job is rendered complete and triggers the post download scripts.
This example assumes that you’ve already connected workstations as Resilio Connect Agents to the Management console.
Distribution Job is created and configured on the "Jobs" tab -> "Configure job" -> "Create new job", through a step-by-step wizard.
Job type. We select "Distribution job" for this example.
Details. Give the job a name and description. This is optional and defaults can be used.
Source agent. Select the source agent - the server that will be uploading data to other agents. Only one source agent can be picked.
Select a path for an agent using folder browser, or type a path yourself. Path macros allow for OS-specific common shortcuts. We will browse for a custom path without using path macros and save it.
Destination agents. On this step, select agents, create a group of agents, or select an existing group of agents that will be receiving the files from the server.
For this example, we will create a new group of agents.
We will leave default destination path for all agents in a group. If destination folder doesn't exist on agent, it will be created when the job starts.
Triggers. Distribution Jobs support trigger scripts that make it possible to run a command before the job starts or after it completes. Default working directory for executed commands is the root of specified source or destination folder. Script shell and syntax depends on the OS the agent runs on.
We will use "After all agents complete downloading" trigger that fires when all destination agents recieve all files. In our example, for Windows agents, we’ll move the installer to a folder with proper execute permissions and run it from there.
It is sometimes easier to complete a task using a scripting language like Python. For example, for POSIX systems we will prepare a simple Python script and deliver it together with the software binary. The trigger will execute the script.
Job Scheduler. We will configure it as a one-time job scheduled to run on the weekend.
We can skip all other steps for this job. On a "Review Summary" step, save if everything is correct, or make adjustments to any step. Job will appear in the list of configured jobs.
After the job run starts, you can observe its progress in "Job runs" tab. Upon successful file delivery and trigger execution, the job run will be marked as "complete" in the Management Console.
In a few simple steps we configured a software update job! Within this example we only updated a handful of machines, however some of our customers use Connect to deliver updates to 1,000s of machines. They take advantage of our superior delivery speed and reliability to shorten rollout time by weeks!