[lug] Two NICs, one IP

[Daniel Webb]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004, Jeff Schroeder wrote:

> Many moons ago, I looked at DRBD but it was still in alpha development
> and had some issues... I didn't want to trust clients' production data
> to it.  Thus, I evolved a solution that uses rsync to synchronize
> arbitrary sets of files (e.g., all of /home) between two servers every
> few minutes.  It's worked really well for me, although admittedly if
> the primary server fails I can potentially lose a few minutes' worth of
> new files (generally incoming e-mail messages).  However, some manual
> work when the server is back online will recover those as well.

I have been using drbd with no problems, but I don't have a heavy load on
my server, and occasionally see weird things in the log files.  As far as
I can tell I haven't lost anything.  That being said, if my professional
reputation were on the line, I would probably also go with the rsync
solution unless I had more reassurance that drbd was extremely stable.
drbd is a fairly complex proposition I think, and I can imagine real
disaster scenarios.

> My original question, though, pertained to a different setup: one where
> the client wants a *single* server to withstand physical cable
> problems.  Although overall I think a *pair* of servers is a more
> robust solution, there are reasons he wants this setup.  That being
> said, I appreciate your comments, and it's refreshing to see that
> others have adopted a model similar to mine.  It lets me know my
> cleverness isn't entirely off-base. ;)

Does he have a lot of rats in the walls or something?