Hi can anyone please help me set up a failover / HA solution (with even some load balancing if it’s possible!!) ?
I already have a server running webmin/virtualmin with a load of Virtual Servers, email, mysql and other services running on it.
I also have a second spare server which is the same hardware/spec and same disk space.
To be honest I’d hoped I could just add the second server somehow to provide failover and HA, initially I just wanted to use keepalived and use unison for the syncing, along with mysql built in sync features.
I realised this doesn’t work after hours of trying to set it up! The problem being that Unison won’t mirror users/groups on the slave if they don’t already exist!!
Also I’ve been told this isn’t an ideal failover idea due to all the different stuff in different places that would have to sync properly.
I’d ruled out DRBD due to being told you can have split brain which sounds scary, as well as my first server already being in production, thus not having the option to repartition and start fresh…
I could really do with some help to find a solution and I wouldn’t mind paying someone (though I don’t have much budget) if they can work with me to get this set up and for it to work reliably.
I don’t mind starting fresh if there would be a way to set up server 2 ready, partition it or whatever it needs to make it more suitable, then copy everything from server 1 to 2 so that there isn’t much downtime and server 2 can become server 1 so everything is still online. Then wipe and re-partition the original server 1 to become server 2 and then get them to mirror/sync and failover.
Or if there is just a way to still do this with server 1 in production and avoid downtime but just adding the second server somehow and doing unison or something like I originally planned…
Thanks for any help at all if anyone else has managed this or know how. 