From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 29 19:55:28 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 6616B16A4CE for ; Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:55:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from sparky.webaries.com (sparky.webaries.com [209.128.231.138]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA22D43D4C for ; Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:55:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from matt@atopia.net) Received: from [192.168.2.6] (bgp591280bgs.jdover01.nj.comcast.net [68.39.220.133]) by sparky.webaries.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2194711; Mon, 29 Dec 2003 22:55:25 -0500 (EST) From: Matthew Juszczak To: anubis In-Reply-To: <200312301348.18306.anubis357@optusnet.com.au> References: <20031226173013.96397.qmail@web60301.mail.yahoo.com> <200312301348.18306.anubis357@optusnet.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1072756543.3446.1.camel@prick> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.4 Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 22:55:44 -0500 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Backup Server 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: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 03:55:28 -0000 I'm not worried about down time. I'm strictly worrying about backing up: /home and /usr/local/mysql/var On server 1 and /home and /var/mail On Server 2. Thats it. Any ideas? Thanks! -Matt On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 22:48, anubis wrote: > On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 03:30 am, samy lancher wrote: > > Hello all, > > I have a 4.5 FreeBSD server. It is our Email, web and database server. I > > would like to setup a backup server so that when the main server goes down > > the backup server takes over its job. Could some one please tell me the > > best way to setup a backup server and also suggest some good documentation. > > > > Thanks in advance, > > Naveen. > > > > > > --------------------------------- > > Do you Yahoo!? > > Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard > > _______________________________________________ > > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > > I have had a bit of a look into this myself and this is my take on it. I > would like to hear of other people experiences too. > > There are a number of things that you have to decide on first before you go > any further. > > These are: > budget > how critical the system is to downtime > how much data you are willing to lose > how long are you willing to wait for the second system to kick in. > These will determine how you are going to build your system. You will have to > keep the answers in mind when you are looking at any solution. > > What you seem to be looking for is a failover system. There is a fair bit > written about failover systems. Googling will find you lots. Make sure that > you look up linux high availability and failover as well to get a broader > view. I have added some links below. > > There is really 2 things that you are trying to do here. Provide redundancy > for the services and redundancy for the data. The services are a bit easier > and cheaper than the data. The big problem is the data, especially > databases. Due to their nature they cant easily be copied while live. > > A solution to this is a SAN. With lots of money it is easier as you can buy > yourself a SAN and hook the two machines to it and host the data on the SAN. > With some clever scripts from those HA sites when one machine goes down the > other can take over and use the same data. There are other solutions using a > fancy Y shaped SCSI cable to a external drive array. Others my be able to > help here as I dont know about them. > > The other alternative is 2 identical machines. > When you have 2 machines with the master storing data on its local drives it > gets tricker. This is where you have to decide on how much data you are > willing to lose. > > As an example we have a bsd box that rsyncs our windows fileserver ever hour. > Should windas go down we run a script on the workstations remapping our > drives to the bsd box. In this case we are prepared to lose up to an hours > work. We are also prepared to lose say 15-30 minutes of time mucking around. > > In your situation perhaps what you could do is upgrade to 5.1 and rsync > snapshots of your data to the secondary machine. You could use the failover > setup as described on HA sites to fire up the services on the secondary > machine and take over. This should work as snapshots are supposed to capture > an instant in time but I couldnt guarantee it until I tested it. You would > still be losing data as you could only snapshot data and transfer it in > discrete intervals. > > A handy thing that linux has that I dont think that freebsd has is drbd. This > is a block device that can mirror data across a network. If freebsd had this > it would be easy to make the second machine a true mirror of the first. > I wonder if they are looking at a thing similar to this in the future. > > Look here for some intersting reading > > http://linux-ha.org/ > http://www.drbd.org/ > http://sporner.dnsalias.org/ > http://failover.othello.ch/getting_started.html > > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"