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pattone · #1 25th October 2011, 17:39

First of all sorry for my english (I'm from argentine)
I have a server wich I setup with this great guide http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-se...ot-ispconfig-3
and is working great with a few websites and domains. Now, looking for information for setup a second server (for failover purpose) that will be in another phisical place with another ip and internet connection I found this 2 excelents howtos:
http://www.howtoforge.com/setting-up...n-debian-lenny
http://www.howtoforge.com/setting-up...n-debian-lenny

This howtos are for use with private IPs (lan) and I want to setup 2 servers in different locations; both with public statics IP. Can I do this with a VPN? If the internet connection of one server goes down would the other server take the job?

Another thing...

The howtos are only for web server and I want to failover all the services (web, mail, ftp, etc)

I found another thread where people are talking about UNISON for this job

http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28246

but I think unison is for replication and not for the failover purpouse. In that thread a user says that he could setup this with unison.

Is there any way to setup this in a free way? (not paying another service for the failover purpouse)

Thanks in advance

pattone · #2 31st October 2011, 16:01

anybody?? I really need this

thanks

mmidgett · #3 8th November 2011, 17:26

I think that there is many different ways of doing this. I have a few questions

Are the 2 servers at the same location?

Are these both on the same internet connection? Meaning WAN interface, NOT Ip's

Do you have any extra servers or regular PC's for use.

Here is my way of doing this.

1. take your DSL modem and configure it into bridge mode.
2. Install pfsense router on to older I386 hardware.
3. Setup Pfsense to use 1:1 NAT and setup your private IP's for the servers, setup the virtual static ips for the outside. setup 1:1 nat from virtual external ips to internal ip.
4. Install openfiler onto 2 servers that have identical storage. There is a how to on here for openfiler replication for High availability storage.
5. basically you will map network drives and store all the services on the mirrored openfiler setup. That way both web,mail,dns,mysql are all stored in one place and then you just have the actual servers connect to shared storage.

This could be done with NFS but have never tried or GlusterFS

I am new to pfsence my self and can only offer little about it. You can have 2 pfsense routers for high availability as dual wans and load balance them. They sky is the limit or in this case your computer hardware. Linux and BSD provide just about everything you need.

mmidgett · #4 8th November 2011, 17:40

I see that you are at 2 locations. How about still using pfsense and OpenVPN with rsync.

pattone · #5 8th November 2011, 21:21

Hi mmidgett; thanks a lot for your answer. I have the two servers in diferent locations with diferent ISPs. Here (I'm in argentine) ISPs have a lot of problems (especially in my area) and thats why I want a failover system. My server doesn't have a lot of traffic but we usually have connection problems.
In both sides I have good VPN routers; do I still need the pfsense setup?

I can't figure out how to setup this, did you know a good Howto for the load balance/failover setup?

I think I could do the replication setup but don't know everything about the load balancing. Think that I'm trying to setup a failover system for my connections problems.

Thanks in advance

mmidgett · #6 11th November 2011, 17:29

Yes I would ditch the routers on site. They have no way of knowing when the other goes down. Do you host you own DNS? howmany sites are being hosted at each locataion?

pattone · #7 11th November 2011, 19:29

yes, I have my own DNS. At this moment only one server is working as a web + mail server with ispconfig 3 wich was setup using the perfect server guide with debian lenny. The other location actually only had a DNS server and I want to setup a second server for this location for the failover purpose

mmidgett · #8 12th November 2011, 22:51

What type of machine is at each location? How fast? How much ram? How much storage?

Your single problem is that your going to need to run DNS servers at both locations of your going to run your own DNS

For Example

Location 1

webserver1.domainname.com
mailerver.domainname.com
ns1.domainname.com

Location 2

webserver2.domanname.com
mailserver2.domainname.com
ns2.domainname.com

Of course the web and mail server share the same address just use a cname for each in the dns.

How many static ips available at each location?