Creating a software mirror cluster.

Hi.

I'm totally new to this clustering way of creating a secure system, but
I hope someone will answer my noobie questions ;)

First of all, what I want to do is to create a cluster containing two
servers. One primary and one slave. The primary should mirror data to
the slave. And if the primary fails, the slave should transparently take
over and serve.

Is this possible to do with RH9 systems, and if yes how? ;)
I've read about Kimberlite, but I am not sure if it would work the way I
want.

Finally, is this cluster system possible to create if the NIC's use
static IP addresses, ie not 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? The cluster should
work as an externally visible webserver.

Help, feedback and links to good info will be greatly appreciated :)


Thnx,
/CGI

CGI <NoSpam4Me@nowhere.anywhere> wrote:
....
> First of all, what I want to do is to create a cluster containing two
> servers. One primary and one slave. The primary should mirror data to
> the slave. And if the primary fails, the slave should transparently take
> over and serve.

> Is this possible to do with RH9 systems, and if yes how? ;)
> I've read about Kimberlite, but I am not sure if it would work the way I
> want.

http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/
http://www.linux-ha.org/

> Finally, is this cluster system possible to create if the NIC's use
> static IP addresses, ie not 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? The cluster should
> work as an externally visible webserver.

Sure, it's possible the above URL should get you started.

--
Michael Heiming

Remove +SIGNS and www. if you expect an answer, sorry for
inconvenience, but I get tons of SPAM

CGI <NoSpam4Me@nowhere.anywhere> wrote:
> I'm totally new to this clustering way of creating a secure system, but
> I hope someone will answer my noobie questions ;)

> First of all, what I want to do is to create a cluster containing two
> servers. One primary and one slave. The primary should mirror data to
> the slave. And if the primary fails, the slave should transparently take
> over and serve.

> Is this possible to do with RH9 systems, and if yes how? ;)
> I've read about Kimberlite, but I am not sure if it would work the way I
> want.

This is typically done with a combo of heartbeat + softraid1 + enbd/nbd
or drdb.

> Finally, is this cluster system possible to create if the NIC's use
> static IP addresses, ie not 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? The cluster should

The usual thing is to assign a floating IP to the cluster, which moves
from primary to secondary as need be. It's an alias. You can also
use name aliases (though obviously if you use IP aliases, you don't
need to). If you want a static address that doesn't move from primary
to secondary it will have to be on a router (i.e. gateway machine) which
does forwarding to the real machine.

> work as an externally visible webserver.

> Help, feedback and links to good info will be greatly appreciated :)

Just look up the linux high availability pages on the web.

Peter