Push replication is used to synchronize Local Repositories, and is implemented by the Artifactory server on the near end invoking a synchronization of artifacts to the far end.
There are two ways to invoke push replication:
Scheduled push: Pushes are scheduled asynchronously at regular intervals
Event-based push: Pushes occur in near-real-time since each create, copy, move or delete of an artifact is immediately propagated to the far end.
Advantages of Push Replication
It is fast because it is asynchronous.
It minimizes the time that repositories are not synchronized.
It reduces traffic on the master node in case of a replication chain ("Server A" replicates to "Server B", "Server B" then replicates to "Server C" etc.).
Avoid Replication Loops ("Cyclic Replication")
A replication loop occurs ("Cyclic" or "Bi-directional" replication) when two instances of Artifactory running on different servers are replicating content from one to the other concurrently.
For example, "Server A" is configured to replicate its repositories to "Server B", while at the same time, "Server B" is configured to replicate its repositories to "Server A".
Or "Server A" replicates to "Server B" which replicates to "Server C" which replicates back to "Server A".
We strongly recommend avoiding cyclic replication since this can have disastrous effects on your system causing loss of data, or conversely, the exponential growth of disk-space usage.
When to Use Push Replication
Event-based push replication is recommended when it is important for the repository at the far end to be updated in near-real-time for any change (create, copy, move or delete of an artifact) in the repository at the near end.
Regular scheduled replications run on top of event-based replication to guarantee full copy consistency even in cases of server downtime and network partitions.
Multi-push Replication
Requires an Enterprise License.
With an Enterprise license, Artifactory supports multi-push replication allowing you to replicate a local repository from a single source to multiple enterprise target sites simultaneously.