Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 08:56:24 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Miguel_Gon=E7alves?= <miguelg@fe.up.pt> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SMB server with failover node Message-ID: <3EA3EA78.8050805@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0304211119120.23847-100000@gnomo.fe.up.pt> References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0304211119120.23847-100000@gnomo.fe.up.pt>
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Miguel Gonçalves wrote: > 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. You'll be fine. Unless you have the statistically improbably bad luck of both drives failing in a short period of time. when a mirrored drive fails in vinum, the system keeps going with no visible effect to the users. I've let a server run like this for a few weeks because the hardware was on order (not recommended!) and I couldn't fix anything until I had a drive to replace the failed one with. > 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? I'm not 100% sure of the effects of rsync on open files, but otherwise it works very well. I've been using it for backup purposes for years now. > 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? Sounds pretty good. You could (therectically) write a cron script that checked the first server periodically and automatically did the switchover in the event of a failuer. This is probably overkill, however, and there's probably no way to be sure you've caught every possible type of failure. Sounds to me like you've got a good plan in place. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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