Using WebDAV for automated downloads
- by Geo Ego
I currently manage a number of sites (at one point about a dozen, currently four, but soon growing into the dozens or hundreds) that serve a piece of software to clients at their remote locations. Our web server is Windows SBS Server 2k3, and the remote servers are Windows Server 2k3.When we have new versions of the software, I upload this new software to a specific directory and rename it; each time the clients boot, they pull their software from that specific directory. With just a few sites, it's no problem for me to RDP in and copy the files over. As the number grows, this will quickly become quite unwieldy.
So I'm thinking that WebDAV would be part of a solution, so that I could simply push the newest version to our server (Windows SBS Server 2003) and make it available to the sites to grab. However, on the remote server side, what are some suggestions for automating the download? I only want the servers to download the files during downtime (between 3 AM and 9 AM), and I only want them to download if there is a new version available. I had thought of writing a program that checked the files on the WebDAV server at a regular interval, compared a hash of the current software to a hash of the software on the server, and only downloaded if they were different, but I'm wondering if there is something I am unaware of that can automate the process.
