[lug] Two NICs, one IP

[Jeff Schroeder]

Daniel wrote:

> I have been using
> drbd as my network RAID for over a year on my mail/web server and it
> seems to be pretty solid.

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.

> You can use a second IP address for the NIC that is "live".

That's exactly what I do-- I love IP "aliases", and use them on paired 
machines to distinguish the primary and backup servers.  They're great 
for failovers.

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. ;)

Thanks,
Jeff