On Thu, February 4, 2010 6:34 pm, Les Mikesell wrote: > On 2/4/2010 3:17 PM, Bo Lynch wrote: >> >> Right know we have about 30 or so linux servers scattered through out or >> district. Was looking at ways of consolidating and some sort of >> redundancy >> would be nice. >> Will clustering not work with certain apps? We have a couple mysql >> dbases, >> oracle database, smb shares, nfs, email, and web servers. > > Each app has it's own best way to provide the redundancy and > auto-failover and it's own set of tradeoffs of the added complexity vs. > the possible reduced downtime if the primary fails. > > I'd balance the options against the low-tech method of having raid > mirrors in swappable bays with a spare similar server chassis or two > around plus regular backups kept at a different location. The raid lets > you continue in the likely event of a disk failure so you can repair it > at a convenient time. Other failures (motherboard, power supply) are > less likely but can be handled by swapping the drives into an alternate > chassis (and with Centos you'll need to re-assign the IP addresses that > are tied to the old NIC mac addresses) with a small amount of downtime. > And the backups cover things like operator or software errors (that > would wipe a cluster too) or a building-level disaster that destroys the > disks or the primary and spare chassis at the same time. Some apps may > be worth the effort to do better. > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell at gmail.com > Currently we are doing the low tech method. Daily and weekly backups both onsite and off along with RAID and all that other good stuff. I was just wondering if clustering was a better way of handling things. Thanks for the info. Bo