Which Product is Right For You? 

If you’re looking for a rock-solid entry-level or enterprise file synchronization solution, Resilio has you covered. If you’re an enterprise or a medium- to large-sized organization managing high-value digital assets, Resilio Connect is the way to go. It’s a powerful and fully managed file sync and management tool that offers enterprise-grade features like scalability, reliability, and high availability. Plus, Resilio Connect supports 400+ million files per job and real-time replication. Resilio Connect offers high-speed, scale-out performance across fast local networks and WAN optimization across higher latency, wide-area networks.  Resilio Connect is also cloud-ready out of the box—for moving files anywhere, globally. 

By contrast, Resilio Sync is well suited to individuals and small businesses needing a reliable entry-level file sync solution. Resilio Sync doesn’t include the rich set of management tools or capabilities as Connect, but only requires a few minutes to set up. So for moving or synchronizing fewer files between 1 or 2 servers, Sync is hard to beat on value.  

Each solution is purpose-built for two very different market segments. This article will explain why media companies and other data-intensive organizations (including some Resilio Sync users) should consider using Resilio Connect. We compare their data management features catering to various industries, particularly the media & gaming industry, beginning with a brief introduction of both solutions. 

To help users stay ahead of the data movement curve, Resilio Sync allows file sharing several times faster than conventional point-to-point file sync solutions due to its peer-to-peer architecture. Resilio Sync is easy to set up and use and supports a variety of platforms (Linux, Windows, and Mac).  

However, if your organization needs to deliver and synchronize larger numbers of files faster, in predictable, fixed time frames–or potentially need to scale up and out or extend to the cloud–Resilio Connect offers a more flexible and vastly more scalable solution.

Resilio Connect is a high-performance, enterprise-class file delivery system, offering a robust suite of enterprise capabilities. The product is well suited to companies with advanced replication needs, placing a high value on their file-based data and requiring reliability, high availability, scalability, industry-leading security, and other enterprise features. Resilio Connect gives IT control over enterprise-wide file data, centrally monitoring and visualizing all data and events across the organization. The system scales to many thousands of endpoints, 250+ million files per job, and accelerates performance in real-time across any network. 

Trusted by hundreds of enterprises, Resilio Connect provides a scalable solution for real-time syncing and data transfers. The tool has become the fastest file synchronization software in the industry.

Connect’s enterprise architecture suits larger businesses with growing needs—or any organization placing a high value on their file-based assets. The software combines the power of every endpoint in your business to transfer data more reliably and much faster than other conventional point-to-point solutions. 

If you’re looking for a file synchronization and management tool, the following article will help you decide if Resilio Sync or Connect is the way to go.

Resilio Sync: An Overview  

Resilio Sync offers small workgroups to share and sync data reliably while eliminating the need for central management. Such workgroups can easily collaborate on large files and move data as fast as their network allows while maintaining complete access control and data privacy. 

It also allows sending a large file or a group of files via email or messaging apps. In this case, you can conveniently share a download link with your workgroup members. 

Setting up Sync is easy.

Each folder can contain up to 1 million files. It also provides partial differential sync and legacy selective sync between two servers. For file sharing between servers numbering more than two, we recommend upgrading to Resilio Connect.

Here’s an overview of a few of the top features of Resilio Sync:

Flexible File Synchronization Options

Resilio Sync offers a basic “selective sync” feature which allows users to browse and selectively synchronize a particular set of files and folders.  Once users determine which files and folders they’d like to download and synchronize, the user simply selects an option. 

This can be handy for consumers and some small businesses looking to sync files and folders among smaller groups of users or use 1 or 2 servers.

Ease of Use

Resilio Sync makes file synchronization a breeze. It integrates seamlessly with the file management tools such as Windows File Explorer and the Mac Finder. If you’re familiar with these popular file management tools, Resilio Sync simply “plugs in” where all you need is to drag and drop a folder on Sync or share files with a right click of your mouse.  

With Resilio Sync you can: 

• Easily share very large files
• Replicate and sync important folders across multiple devices 
• Secure and protect sensitive files
• Access files on the go by synchronizing files with your smartphone. This video explains how Sync works on mobile devices.

Security

Resilio Sync offers the ability to sync files securely and privately by replicating data only directly between trusted devices and keeping data encrypted in transit. This means that Sync neither hosts nor caches any content on a third-party server. All control rests within your devices. As we say, “your data belongs to you,” so you’re able to essentially build your own private cloud.

You can also use a Relay Server if peers cannot establish a direct connection between themselves (like when devices are behind a symmetric NAT).

Sync’s security model is cryptographic instead of password-based. Cryptographic verification is required for peer introduction and data access. Because of this, there is no need to worry about insecure passwords, changing passwords or users writing passwords on post-it notes so they don’t forget. 

If you’re sharing externally (it can be everything from an important source code file, or banking details for contractors), Sync has embedded security settings. For instance: by default, every link you share requires an approval from you, and it’s set to expire within three days (you can definitely adjust it). 

Moreover, each device has complete control over how it communicates with other peers and services can be limited to increase privacy. A complete privacy and security brief for Sync is available here. 

Resilio Connect: Overview  

Resilio Connect is the company’s premiere file delivery and synchronization software that offers high-speed and automated file management solutions to larger companies and data-intensive organizations with larger numbers of users and servers. Resilio Connect is an alternative to Resilio Sync’s limited features.

Resilio Connect is a value-packed solution that does much more than synchronization and file transfers. The software has made its mark across multiple industry verticals, including SaaS, tech, media, gaming, retail, logistics, and the marine industry. 

Media and gaming industries benefit significantly from Connect’s large file and cloud server replication features. Read here to learn how Larian Studios and Mixhits Radio have been using Resilio Connect to synchronize huge amounts of data cost-effectively.  

Architecturally, Resilio Connect is an agent-based solution.  Resilio Agents are installed on all devices (peers) participating in data movement jobs.  Job types include Distribution, Consolidation, Scripting, and Synchronization. Resilio Connect agents support popular operating systems such as Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Android, and a variety of NAS platforms.  Connect also supports popular virtualization platforms (Citrix, Microsoft, VMware), servers, storage, networks, and cloud providers.  In fact, you can use any S3-compatible cloud object storage–as well as cloud file storage.

The Resilio Connect Management Console is a centralized, web-based management system used to manage and monitor all agents and job functions through an easy-to-administer graphical user interface. Administrators are able to control agents, manage users, create and run jobs, control bandwidth allocations, and deploy job instructions across the organization. Once jobs are running, Administrators are able to monitor and collect statistical data globally. Reporting events and notifications via email is simple.  

Resilio Connect is all about automation. Connect offers a complete API set to expose and automate all functions performed by the Management Console.  The Management Console may be installed on Windows and Linux servers. Please see Resilio.com for the latest System Requirements.

Here’s a list of the various use cases and management solutions that Connect offers enterprises.

To see if Resilio Connect could be a fit for you, schedule a demo.

Web and App Server Sync

Resilio Connect automates web deployment for apps, code, and content—and keeps files current across multiple servers and locations. Real-time one-to-many and many-to-many synchronization give DevOps and SysOps teams a way to deliver updates in fixed time frames across as many servers as needed without creating any bottlenecks. 

The architecture is fully distributed, so there’s never a single point of failure (SPOF). What’s really cool is that, if there is a failure, Resilio dynamically routes around failures. For example, if a server (running a Resilio agent) goes down, Resilio simply uses another available peer included in the sync job.

Remote Work

Resilio offers remote work solutions, advanced management, and consolidation capabilities for data-intensive global enterprises, including multiple admin roles, central management, private tracker servers, etc.  

There will be a standard and consistent view of the corporate file system for each of your remote servers. With Selective Sync, remote workers can download only the necessary files without dealing with the entire bulk. Changes to the files on the remote servers are synched back to the corporate office or cloud.

Cloud Sync

Resilio Connect makes using your cloud provider of choice incredibly easy. Companies can use Resilio Connect to ingest, distribute, and sync files with the cloud. Some companies are using a hybrid cloud approach, where files can be efficiently synchronized between a remote location and the cloud–or an on-prem data center and the cloud.

Moreover, Resilio Connect enables transparent selective sync (TSS), an advanced data management capability. TSS gives users the ability to easily and efficiently browse and sync files with the cloud. The solution can be used for remote work or a variety of advanced hybrid cloud caching scenarios.

To see a live demo of TSS, please get in touch with us.

DFSR Replacement

Resilio Connect is a powerful, value-based alternative to Windows’ DSFR. DFSR (sometimes written as DFS-R), or distributed file system replication, is a feature of Windows Server for replicating files across several servers with a DFS namespace (DFSN). DFSR is a standard client-server or 1:1 file synchronization approach that was popular 10-15 years ago.  Alas, there are numerous challenges with DFSR which Resilio Connect solves. Resilio Connect is a highly reliable, easy DFSR replacement.

Connect offers a noticeable difference in reliability, speed, flexibility, and scale. Unlike DFSR, there are no limits on the max number of servers and files needing replication. 

Disaster Recovery  

Resilio Connect offers a highly resilient, real-time and low latency solution for DR. The solution eliminates single points of failures (SPOFs) to protect files across multiple sites. Moreover, Connect is equipped with a peer-to-peer architecture that dynamically routes around failures. If at any time there’s a failure in the network or on any endpoint, Resilio Connect routes around the failures. Connect provides the ability to keep many servers and locations in sync concurrently.

This vastly simplifies disaster recovery and other use cases requiring active-active high availability across sites. Because Connect keeps files in sync in real-time across multiple servers and sites, recovery is faster and easier. This also minimizes data loss as more granular recovery points can be met, preventing any chances of data loss during a disaster. 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Profile Sync

Resilio Connect comes with a real-time synchronization solution for VDI which includes active-active high availability and the ability to improve the end-user logon experience. It can easily synchronize user profile data, avoiding latency across any data center location, over any wide area network, and for any amount of data. 

You can ensure cost-effective and reliable failover of VDI environments and accelerate replication of VDI user profiles and time-to-desktop by up to 5x over conventional data replication tools

Resilio supports popular virtualization tools, virtual machines, and VDI profile management solutions such as Microsoft FSLogix, Citrix Profile Management, and VMware Horizon DEM.  

Why Resilio Connect over Resilio Sync  

Global control through powerful enterprise capabilities

When it comes to global or highly distributed file delivery and management, the Resilio Connect management console offers centralized management through a single pane of glass. The visualization, tracking, and monitoring features make it an extremely useful tool for managing all file delivery operations, from agents to jobs to managing and monitoring performance across the enterprise.

The management console provides a comprehensive view of all of your jobs–distribution, consolidation, synchronization, and scripting. You can view real-time performance metrics, drill into the status of individual jobs, manage endpoints, and review the history of all executed jobs in your network. Job priorities can be quickly established, allowing you to transfer important files first.  You can also set and manage bandwidth allocations and automate notifications to email and webhooks.

Capturing and managing events is easy. Also, you can create audit logs and analyze them by pairing Connect with your reporting or event processing solution, such as Splunk.

Here’s a view of the management console:

Agents tags are another helpful feature offered by Connect that can be used in distribution, consolidation and script jobs to automate part of the setup and make it more flexible. 

Moreover, with Connect, you can script any of its functionality using a powerful REST API. This feature can help you manage agents, create groups, control jobs or report on data transfers.

Resilio Sync, by contrast, doesn’t offer these types of enterprise capabilities.  

Extensive file transfer capabilities

Both Resilio Connect and Resilio Sync can run synchronization jobs allowing you to sync changed files and folders in real-time. It allows you to create a mirror of a particular folder. 

But, Connect comes with many other file transfer capabilities making it extremely useful for thriving businesses. Sync doesn’t include these advanced data movement capabilities.

With Connect you can run advanced distribution, consolidation, synchronization, and scripting jobs. 

• Distribution job (one-way, two-way, one-to-many): A one-time data transfer from a server to selected agents. The distribution job is commonly used to deliver software updates or important documents to remote workstations.
• Consolidation job (many-to-one): It is a one-time data transfer, consolidating files from multiple endpoints on one or several servers and is commonly used, for example, to collect periodic reports from workstations.
• Synchronization job (one-way, two-way, one-to-many, many-to-many): It is an on-going continuous file transfer across multiple agents back and forth, or perform one-way synchronization. It allows to create a mirror of the folder. You can modify files, add new files or delete some of them, and all these changes get automatically synced to other agents in real time.

All jobs support scripting (before and after a job run completes) and all jobs can be automated via scripting and/or a complete API set.

Configuring new jobs is easy (see below):

Moreover, you can also schedule jobs according to your bandwidth availability and create different schedule profiles for different agent groups and jobs. 

It’s easy to schedule jobs or run them automatically.

And creating bandwidth policies for jobs is a breeze. Simply paint the days and times you’d like the job to run, and assign a given bandwidth rate.

Cloud-ready: deploy on-prem, hybrid, or cloud native

Resilio Connect supports a variety of cloud provides and scenarios, from hybrid to cloud-native. Resilio supports any type of S3-compatible cloud object storage and cloud file storage. It can greatly simplify your hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. Connect can also keep multiple clouds in continuous sync from all edge locations, ensuring you always have critical data in various clouds.

Resilio Connect prevents you from vendor “lock-in” as it works seamlessly across data storage solutions and cloud providers. Data is never stored in a proprietary format, so you maintain control of your data. Resilio natively supports Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle, Azure Blob and any S3-compatible object storage.

High performance for any scale

Resilio Connect offers extensive features which enhance data transfer speeds and scalability. Unlike Resilio Sync, Resilio Connect allows companies to sync hundreds of servers and millions of files across multiple locations, all in real-time. With Sync, you are limited to a maximum of two servers only. 

In the case of Sync, the maximum allowed number of clients per folder is hundred, while there is no such limit in the case of Connect. Similarly, Sync allows a maximum of one million files per folder, while with Connect, this number can exceed two hundred million files.

Lastly, Connect offers a very powerful WAN optimization or WAN acceleration capability based on UDP called Zero Gravity Transport (ZGT). This WAN optimization capability overcomes latency on loss typically associated WANs. The solution is built in and does not require any dedicated software and/or hardware. ZGT speeds up sync across WAN by up to 100x over conventional file replication tools.

ZGT is cross-platform, runs directly on each Resilio agent, and makes it easy to support a variety of networks and network configurations, such as less-than-perfect home Wifi Internet connections.  

Directory services and identity management

When talking about enterprise-grade deployments, identity management and integrating with Active Directory is a critical cornerstone of the solution. This ensures end-users of the organization have access to the required technology resources and domains. This is where Connect comes in handy. Resilio Connect fully supports the use of LDAP and makes identity management a walk in the park. 

The Resilio Connect management console can easily be set up to use LDAP within your Active Directory domain or integrate with Azure AD. (Resilio Sync does not offer identify management integration with AD.)

Global 24×7 support 

Enterprise support is a major factor required by many companies–and here Connect is the clear winner in the Sync. vs. Connect comparison. With Connect, customer support is not just global, but Resilio also makes its top engineers available for expert help and support on deployments, scripting, and API integration. 

The support plan for Connect has three tiers (Standard, Enhanced and Premium). Clients opting for the Premium level of customer support get the first non-automated response within 2hrs, provided they file a Level 5 (Critical) ticket. They must have a dedicated resource to work with the Resilio engineering team.

On the other hand, Resilio Sync comes with basic customer support features. Users have to rely on the Sync user forum to troubleshoot their issues. 

Continuous innovation

In addition, Resilio’s world-class engineering team is continuously innovating on Resilio Connect.

Resilio Connect continuously enhances performance for its enterprise use cases. This includes uploading/downloading files from the cloud, sustained agent-to-agent transfer speeds and site-to-site transfer speeds (on-premises, hybrid cloud and cloud-native). 

Scalability is crucial for businesses to replicate exponentially more files across a wider range of use cases. Resilio team has improved scalability in this release by enhancing memory utilization efficiency. Memory footprint requirements have been reduced by 80% for all jobs. Resilio Management Console’s ability to centrally manage up to fifty thousand agents per console instance enhances operational scalability.  

 Sync doesn’t offer any such feature updates or consistent development of its code base.

 Advanced built-in security features 

Resilio Connect ensures native, end-to-end encryption, data integrity, and mutual authentication. This whitepaper provides a detailed technical review of Resilio Connect security.

All communication sessions are end-to-end encrypted. It includes both agent-to-agent and agent-to-MC communications. Each transfer session between two agents has a unique TLS 1.2 connection with a unique session key. Resilio Connect encrypts in-transit data using AES-256 or AES-128 encryption, while Resilio Sync only offers AES-128 encryption. Both come with forward secrecy, which protects past sessions against future compromises of secret keys. 

Resilio Connect requires mutual authentication of all parties in the system. The Management Console and agent mutual authentication rely on an agent’s private token and server’s X.509 certificate. The Management Console verifies that an agent provides a valid private token before initiating any communication with the agent. It also supports 2-factor authentication. 

When it comes to data integrity, Resilio Connect agents split each file into blocks (32KB or more) and calculates the SHA2 hash of each block. The list of hashes and the signature (file metadata) are transferred before the actual data transfer. The receiver validates the signature of the metadata and the integrity of each received block by validating its hash against meta information. Damaged or corrupted blocks are discarded and scheduled for retransmission. 

Overall, Resilio has achieved SOC 2 Type 1 compliance. Each version of Resilio Connect undergoes penetration tests before release.   

Trial Run

We tested both Resilio Sync and Resilio Connect to check their file-sharing speeds across the same network. In our test, it took three minutes to transfer a 1.6 GB .mkv movie file using Connect, while Sync consumed five minutes for the same task on the same network.

Conclusion

Today’s rapidly shaping digital market leaves little to no room for software lags or operational disruptions. You have to be ready for the shifting trends and latest developments. Connect comes with active development, timely notifications, one major release every year, and other feature updates, making it a handy tool for large-scale businesses, especially from the media and gaming industries.

While Sync is a reasonably priced but reliable solution for small businesses with minimal needs, Connect can take your file management and operational performance to the next level with its robust infrastructure and global support system.

Schedule a demo if you want to learn more about how Resilio Connect can provide speedy, scalable, and reliable data synchronization with impeccable cross-platform support.