How to synchronize Git Repositories across 2 Servers

Question

I'm looking for a way to automatically synchronize Git repositories across (2) servers so they are interchangeable from a third point.

Situation is as follows: We heavily use git for all our projects, and some of the Repositories grow quite fast in size. Currently we have one central server and everyone is pushing/pulling to/from this one. However this all goes through the internet connection and therefore is not the fastest way.

The Idea: Put another server in the office, and have all the git repositories there for in-office-use. This server would need to be synchronized with the one on-line. At best the users would not even know which one they use via some dns-adjustment, so the address of the on-line server repositories resolves to the in-office-one when connected to the network there.

Is anyone already doing something similar out there? Or is there a easier way to accomplish the target.

Answer 1

I would see such a mechnism easily done with the SSH protocol (meaning a framework like gitolite is in place both on the LAN repo and the WAN http repo), because then you can easily extend the ssh forced command mechanism to:

• first check if the two repo are synchrone
• reject the command if the local repo is less up-to-date than the remote one
• synchronize the local repo with the remote one of needed

To do so with hooks is more complicated and would need to be carefully setup for each kind of server-side hooks in order to keep that synchronization mechanism up at all time.