Chris Blankenship's Ramblings

For some time now I have been a huge fan of Windows Live Sync, formerly known as Foldershare.  So much in fact that I have posted several entries on my blog about using the product.  The primary way to use Live Sync is to install it onto two computers, run the service in an interactive mode (launches when you login) and then configure a folder to synchronize between the two computers.  Whenever a file is edited on the first computer it automatically synchronizes the updated files over to the second computer.

There is, of course, another way to use Live Sync that really stretches the intended purpose of the product:  running Live Sync as a service.  The goal here is to have the service always running on a computer, even if the user isn’t logged into an interactive session.  This is especially helpful on those servers that are headless or that you just don’t log into regularly.  I use this solution on my web server as a backup mechanism.

For example, every night I run a backup script on my web server that calls NTBackup.exe, creating a BKF file into a backup folder.  Live Sync is configured to synchronize the backup folder with my home computer which is running Live Sync.  Every day another program called Mozy Backup sends the backup files to an online backup store where it remains available for an emergency recovery if needed.  I have been using this process for some time now without really any problems. 

Unfortunately times have changed and now it seems that I will need to look for another solution.  The problem is that Live Sync currently has a bug that periodically causes the users credentials to become lost, requiring the user to re-enter the account information.  While not a critical issue when running Live Sync from an interactive session, it’s catastrophic when running Live Sync as a service.  I ran this issue up to the product group and received some additional information about the problem:

Generally once you sign in with “remember my password” checked, Live Sync uses the cached credential to auto sign you in the next time Sync starts.  However, if Live Sync failed to connect to passport server to validate your credential within given timeout, it would ask you to sign in again.

When running Live Sync as a service you don’t see or get the chance to enter those credentials again and the server never re-connects to the Live Sync controllers.  The service still runs but nothing is being synchronized and won’t until you log into the server, launch the Live Sync application and re-enter the credentials.

As of now there doesn’t seem to be any patch scheduled for release to correct this bug, meaning the product has become dysfunctional for my purposes.  I would suspect many other people are in the same boat as I am and have been forced to look for alternative solutions. 

In Microsoft’s defense, Live Sync wasn’t designed, and isn’t supported, to run as a service.  So it’s not surprising that this issue doesn’t really register to the Live product group.  Even so, it’s really frustrating to know the potential of a product and not be able to use it.  In fact, I am confused why the product group wouldn’t want to design the product to run as a service.  Seems logical to include this capability since there seems to be a significant number of people want to use it this way.

So if you are wanting to run a service based synchronization product perhaps you shouldn’t be using Live Sync as a service and instead look for some other product that will fit your needs.   For me, well I guess the hunt is on for folder synchronization via a service.  If I find one and it works good I will be sure to share it with everyone.