Setting up a mirror

If you want to set up a mirror of OpenVZ downloads, here's how.

Requirements

• The mirrored contents should be available through HTTP and FTP; both are optional but of course at least one should be there. In addition, you might provide rsync access — this is highly optional.

• Your http/ftp servers should return correct status for non-existent files (HTTP 404, FTP 550).

• Your mirror should be updated on a regular basis; 1 hour period is recommended.

• Your should have some monitoring in place to check that your mirror is
  • serving the files using all the protocols it supports
  • updated periodically

If you can set up a system conforming to the above requirements — read on.

Setting up the mirroring process

To initially mirror the contents, run

rsync -av --delete rsync://download.openvz.org/openvz-download /local/path

Next step is to add the cron job to run the same rsync command regularly. It is suggested to do that at least hourly.

Setting up an access to your mirror

When you are ready to open up your mirror, set up HTTP/FTP access to it. Preferrably, the mirror should be available at http://openvz.yoursite.com/ or http://mirrors.yoursite.com/openvz/ (same with ftp).

Announcing your mirror

Final step is to announce the mirror by sending an email to mirrors@openvz.org. It should contain at least the following information:

• physical location of your site (country, state/province, city);
• frequency of updates;
• URL(s) to access the mirror;
• Email address of mirror admin (whom to contact in case of problems). It will better be some generic address (like mirroradmin@ or something), forwarded to at least a few people.

Some stats

OpenVZ download site is about 12 GB now (Apr 2007), so your mirror will need at least the same space. It is growing at about 1 GB a month or slower.

The traffic for download.openvz.org is about 200 to 500 GB per month; it should be lower than that for your mirror.

See also

• Download mirrors