Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 12:33:24 -0500 From: "adp" <dap99@i-55.com> To: "Chuck Swiger" <cswiger@mac.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: NFS server fail-over - how do you do it? Message-ID: <01a901c44735$9c563270$6501a8c0@yourqqh4336axf> References: <011401c446ae$3aa4cff0$6501a8c0@yourqqh4336axf> <40BB6376.8030704@mac.com>
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Very useful information, thanks. We have a very stable NFS server, but I am still working hard to put some redundancy into place. I was thinking that since NFS is udp-based, that if the primary NFS server failed, and the secondary assumed the primary NFS server's IP address, that things would at least return to normal (of course, any writes that had been in progress would fail horribly). That doesn't seem to be the case. During a test we killed the main NFS server and brought up the NFS IP as an alias on the backup. Didn't work. Has anyone tried anything like this? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Swiger" <cswiger@mac.com> To: "adp" <dap99@i-55.com> Cc: <questions@freebsd.org> Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 11:55 AM Subject: Re: NFS server fail-over - how do you do it? > adp wrote: > > One of my big problems right now is that if our primary NFS server goes down > > then everything using that NFS mount locks up. If I change to the mounted > > filesystem on the client then it stalls: > > > > # pwd > > /root > > # cd /nfs-mount-dir > > [locks] > > > > If I try to reboot the reboot fails as well since FreeBSD can't unmount the > > filesystem!? > > Solaris provides mechanisms for NFS-failover for read-only NFS shares, but > FreeBSD doesn't seem to support that. Besides, most people seem to want to > use read/write filesystems, which makes the former solution not very useful to > most people's requirements. > > The solution to the problem is to make very certain that your primary NFS > server does not go down, ever, period. Reasonable people who identify a > mission-critical system such as a primary NFS server ought to be willing to > spend money to get really good hardware, have a UPS, and so forth to facility > the goal of 100% uptime. A Sun E450 still makes a nice primary fileserver, > although NAS solutions like a NetApp or an Auspex (not cheap!) should also be > considered. > > The other choice would be to switch from using NFS to using a distributed > filesystem which implements fileserver redundancy, such as AFS and it's > successor, DFS. > > -- > -Chuck > >
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