Quick start

Overview

This article is a quick step-by-step instruction guiding you through the installation of Resilio Connect product and configuring it to sync data across Resilio Connect agents.

In this guide will will install the main components of Resilio Connect - Management Console and Agents, and configure a few sample synchronization jobs.

1. Install Resilio Connect Management Console

Resilio Connect Management Console - is a central element of Resilio Connect. From the Console administrator configures synchronization jobs across the agents.

Installation requires admin rights. 
On Linux: download and unpack resilio-connect-server-linux-x64.tar.gz. Run the update-or-install script from the tar.
On Windows: run the “resilio-connect-console-windows.msi” installation package and follow installation wizard. By default Resilio Connect Management Console is installed to "C:\Program Files\Resilio Connect Server\", it registers itself as a service and runs automatically after installation.

More on this step: installing Connect Management Console

2. Ensure your firewall allows incoming connections to Resilio Connect Console

If you are using Windows Firewall, Resilio Management Console will take care to add itself to firewall exceptions. Although, if you are using any third party firewall, please ensure you allow incoming connections to ports used by Management Console

More on this step: ports used by Resilio Connect, configuring your firewall 

 

3. Apply your license and prepare config file for your agents

Open a browser and navigate to your server Web UI https://address:8443. Address might be localhost, and IP or DNS name of the server where you installed the Console. Make sure to specify "https://" protocol explicitly as server rejects all plain HTTP connection attempts.

As the certificate is self-signed, you'll see a warning. Ignore it for now and add the self-signed certificate to the exception list. It's possible to use custom certificates. 

On first run, Management Console requests to specify admin login and password and agree to EULA
More on this step: password policy, using custom certificates

 

After login and password, Console asks for a license file. Pick the license supplied to you by Support or Sales representative or attached to the trail registration e-mail. 
More on this step: applying license

Once the license is applied, Console lets you through to its interface. There you will see tabs with Jobs, Agents, Groups and other configuration parameters. 

 

4. Install your Agents and connect them to the Management Console

 After installing the Console, it's time to install and connect more Resilio Agents to it. You will notice that there's already one Agent connect. This is the Resilio Console Agent that comes with the Console by default. 

To connect more Agents follow the steps.
Open Settings -> General and click "Generate agent config". You'll need to edit your config file before downloading it.

Now download the sync.conf file and deliver it to all computers you are going to deploy Resilio Connect Agent.

Adjust the fields in the config if necessary. For example, edit the address of the Console as it's accessible for the remote Agents. 

More on this step: agent config

Install the Agent itself.

5. Organizing your agents and sharing folders with them

Now you should have Resilio Console running and at least two or three Agents visible in the "Agents" tab. Agents can be organized in groups and get jobs assigned.

Let's configure two types of jobs:
- an "Updates" job to deliver updates to everyone from a central server
- "Engineering documents" to get docs shared between all agents.

These two will be done with Distribution and Synchronization jobs accordingly.

First, let's create a job to deliver updates to the rest of the agents:

1. Open the JOBS tab Configure Jobs -> Create new Job, pick Distribution. Give it name Updates, add description if necessary.
2. On next step pick the source agent - Management Console in our example. Give the directory path, from which files will be distributed. The path must already exist and files be there
3. On next step select destination agents, OS X and Windows agents in our example. Select path for them to store the files.
4. On step "Post commands" specify commands or scripts that need to be executed after transfer is done, if necessary. read more about post commands and scripts here.
5. Review the job and save.

See here for more details about Distribution job.

 

Now, let's create a job for Engineering documents exchange:

1. Go back to tab Configure Jobs -> Create new Job, pick Synchronization. Give it name and description.
2. On step "Read-Write agents" pick the agent who will be able to upload files to others and download files from them. Select path for these agents. 
3. On step "Read-Only agents" the agents who will only be able to download files from other, but won't propagate any file changes. This step can be skipped. In our example all agents will have RW access.
4. On step "Path" specify the paths to the share on agents.
5. Review the job and save.

For more details about Synchronization job see here.

After an agent is added to a folder, it's time to check that the folders are created in their file system, in accordance with path macros.

If you place some data into the "Updates" folder on your server, you get it automatically distributed to your other agents after restarting the job. 

All agents will be uploading to each other new and updated files for the Engineering documents folder because they all have Read-write access there.