Hosted, Centralized Source Control

Watchdog provides hosted access to the Subversion (SVN) version control software (available from http://subversion.tigris.org ), and recommends that clients on the windows platform use the TortoiseSVN  client to access it. A demonstration screencast for the tool is available in our demos section.

This tool offers compelling advantages for distributed build teams;

• Network Based - Older tools like Visual Source Safe are based around file-sharing, so they performs very slowly when used over a WAN link. Most shops that need to use VSS over a larger network will invest in licenses for the SourceOffSite tool or change version control systems. Subversion works over SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS, as well as through it’s own SVN protocol and local filesystem.
• Concurrent Versioning - Developers using SVN can work when physically disconnected from the network. Instead of locking and unlocking files throughout development, Developers reach a stable point in their development and check in their changes all at once. SVN handles merging most changes automatically. VSS requires that developers stay constantly connected to handle lock management.
• No-Cost Branches - SVN stores only the differences between versions. This means that a development snapshot can be taken at any time. These snapshots are simply pointers to locations within the filestream. This means that branches don’t have a size or performance penalty, so it’s much easier to maintain them.

We have found that Subversion is an incredibly robust tool- thousands of open source projects rely on it every day, and have for years. We can host your subversion repository securely, or we can help you manage an internal implementation. Our rates are monthly per seat, making it easy to try it and change if it doesn't work for you.

Intellectual Property Security

When in a hosted environment, the security of your intellectual property is incredibly important- and we take it seriously.

All system access is secured in one of three ways:

• Encrypted SSH – All administrative access to the linux backend systems is via encrypted SSH connections through a bastion host
• HTTPS – We set up the tortoise tool to use SSL over HTTP for file access
• OpenVPN  – We secure RDP access to our windows staging servers by using the openVPN system, which provides network-level security.

In addition, our servers are located in a secure, locked cage at our datacenter. This facility is manned 24x7, has redundant power and network connectivity, as well as onsite UPS and generators. This provides physical and network level security for these systems. We provide web-based client access to our network monitoring system so they can independently verify our uptime.

We offer multipoint backups; your source repository is exported each night, encrypted, and copied to our remote server in California for easy recovery in case of system failure. We also maintain a local hot copy of the repository to reduce downtime in case of a simple server failure.

At your option, we can also provide periodic exports of your content on CDR. Most customers elect to receive this on a quarterly basis.