From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 21 03:30:11 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9AA537B401 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2003 03:30:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fe.up.pt (relay2.fe.up.pt [193.136.28.34]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2C89943FDD for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2003 03:30:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from miguelg@gnomo.fe.up.pt) Received: from lorosae.fe.up.pt (root@lorosae.fe.up.pt [193.136.28.35]) by fe.up.pt (8.12.9/8.12.4) with ESMTP id h3LAU7Rq024945 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2003 11:30:07 +0100 Received: from gnomo.fe.up.pt (root@gnomo.fe.up.pt [193.136.28.132]) by lorosae.fe.up.pt (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h3LAU7fJ015229 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2003 11:30:07 +0100 (WET DST) Received: from localhost (miguelg@localhost) by gnomo.fe.up.pt (8.11.4/8.11.4) with ESMTP id h3LAU7F24446 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2003 11:30:07 +0100 Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 11:30:07 +0100 (WEST) From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Miguel_Gon=E7alves?= To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS-ng (Milter interface) Subject: SMB server with failover node X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 10:30:12 -0000 Dear BSDers, I am going to install a FreeBSD 4.8 SMB server (using Samba) in a corporate environment. Due to the small number of clients on the network I will alocate 6 GB on the main server hard drive for those users. In this main server I have 2 hard drives configured as a RAID-1 Vinum device. What kind of graceful failures have users of Vinum noticed, i.e., can the server enter degraded mode using only one drive without much user intervention? Money is a concern but should I move to hardware RAID (with hot swap option) to prevent user intervention? I can only get near the machine at best in 3 or 4 hours (and the local users don't understand FreeBSD) but I will monitor the machine daily remotely. To better cope with failure of this server I am also installing a second FreeBSD box that has much more hard disk space and will sync those 6 GB of data every 15/30 minutes. What is the best way to mirror the data: rsync or dump? What if there are open files? Will rsync work? If the main server fails I can instruct the local staff to disconnect it from the network and execute a command at the backup server's console. This command would change the server's IP address and would start the Samba daemon. Any ideas for a better setup? Thanks for your time, Miguel Goncalves PS: Please CC me also.