From owner-freebsd-questions  Sat Aug  4 11:49:14 2001
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Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2001 20:51:00 +0200
From: Christoph Sold <so@i-clue.de>
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To: Alvin Sim <bsd140870@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: backup server
References: <18915082467.20010804003801@yahoo.co.uk>
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Alvin Sim wrote:
> 
> i'm looking into implementing 2 servers for a dept. and am looking for
> ways to to "mirror" a server -- ie, if one fails, all clients will
> automagically connect to the second server -- ala NT PDC's.
> 
> what do i (basically) need to do/implement? any pointers to some
> relevant docs would be great. thanks.

There is no such thing as the magic you describe. To get a little bit of
this ideal solution, you'd have to define
1) which services this boxes have to provide
2) what the least acceptable working level of that service is
3) how to detect the failure and 
4) how to switch over that service safely to the second box.

each of those considerations is pretty complicated, and there is no such
thing as a standard definition. Thus you have either to invest some time
to think about it, or pay some amount of money to get somebody who does.

HTH
-Christoph Sold

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