Mirroring Redhat Servers

We have two Redhat Fedora servers. One runs a mission critical app,
the other is a web server. We have office locations on the east and
west coast of the U.S. connected by T-1's. What I have been asked to
do is set up two new servers on the east coast, that will exactly
mirror - either in real time, or on a tight schedule (i.e. hourly),
the data on the west coast. I would like to initiate failover
automagically, or have a procedure in place so that this can be done
within a very short period of time. I was originally thinking of just
using rsync, is there a better way?
Has anyone done this? Could you point me in the right direction to
start looking? Im open to software solutions if someone has a good one
that they have used successfully.

Thanks,
Chas.

(E-Mail Removed) (Chas) wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed) om:

> We have two Redhat Fedora servers. One runs a mission critical app,
> the other is a web server. We have office locations on the east and
> west coast of the U.S. connected by T-1's. What I have been asked to
> do is set up two new servers on the east coast, that will exactly
> mirror - either in real time, or on a tight schedule (i.e. hourly),
> the data on the west coast. I would like to initiate failover
> automagically, or have a procedure in place so that this can be done
> within a very short period of time. I was originally thinking of just
> using rsync, is there a better way?
> Has anyone done this? Could you point me in the right direction to
> start looking? Im open to software solutions if someone has a good one
> that they have used successfully.
>
> Thanks,
> Chas.
>

It is way more than just mirroring servers.

Keeping the data in synch is only part of the challenge.

My initial reaction is that what you have described must have been thought
up by Dilbert's PHB who thinks the way to solve disk space problems is by
emailing pieces of the database to users who have spare disk space on their
desktop PCs. Somebody knows enough buzz words & acronyms to be DANGEROUS.
Nothing is impossible for the person who does not have to do it!

Here is what I think "you" want or desire to happen.
The mission critical app. server of the Left Coast melts down.
Automagically the Left Coast clients will detect this failure
and their packets will immediately find their way to the "hot standby"
server on the East Coast. This scenario will stipulate that you have
been successful at figuring out how to keep the data in synch.

I doubt that you'll ever see this pipedream become reality.
What kind of clients do you have?
How are they going to detect the failure & redirect their connections
to the new server?

Clinging to sanity, (E-Mail Removed) (Chas) mumbled into her beard:
> We have two Redhat Fedora servers. One runs a mission critical app,
> the other is a web server. We have office locations on the east and
> west coast of the U.S. connected by T-1's. What I have been asked to
> do is set up two new servers on the east coast, that will exactly
> mirror - either in real time, or on a tight schedule (i.e. hourly),
> the data on the west coast. I would like to initiate failover
> automagically, or have a procedure in place so that this can be done
> within a very short period of time. I was originally thinking of just
> using rsync, is there a better way?
> Has anyone done this? Could you point me in the right direction to
> start looking? Im open to software solutions if someone has a good one
> that they have used successfully.

What sort of stupidity is this? Seriously?

If you don't have _clear_ answers to the issues already in mind, then
the idea is doomed to failure.

If the "mission critical app" involves a database, then you should
look into what data replication systems are available;
application-specific answers are likely to be _way_ more suitable than
rsync.

But to design a failover system, you've got to have a HIGH level of
confidence in your HA tools. That's unlikely to be the case if
someone else has written them...

Coming to Usenet looking for answers to this is only _marginally_ less
dumb than going to can.taxes looking for legal advice. There, you'd
be _guaranteed_ to get idiotic answers being emitted by flakey "tax
protestors." Your expectations can only be fairly marginally higher
anywhere else on Usenet...
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