Heee haaaa!!!

Today I've tried configuring and enabling HA and VRRP in the test platform that I 'grow' at work.

It is based on two Ubuntu 8.04 distributions with bunch of features already set in place.

i.e.: apache, squid, iptables, etc that were set more towards the internet proxy/connector/director (more on a separate article)

All required packages has been set in place, and now the two big things:

• How do I enabled fail-over between the two boxes?
• How do I put a kind of virtual IP for the sake of load balancing between the two boxes (if both are up at the same time)

Several solutions were on the table (unsorted):

• Put multiple DNS entry with the same name but different IP addresses (round robin DNS??? I doubt this is what it is called)
• Put several entry for hosts file in each boxes (... and I will go insane as I need to deploy around 50+ hosts in the test bed. The worst part will be whenever there is a change in place, ... say the IP address of the host(s) )
• Use a method similar to clustering. I remember there is a package called 'heartbeat'. Which is -I believe- was adopted by stonebeat to their products (or vice versa, CMIIW)
• Another method is to use virtual IP address and put the DNS entry to only point to that virtual IP

In the end, I decided to adopt the last two options. So, in addition to having each box covering each other, having virtual IP also helps in ensuring whichever box that are up will serve the request. The package for putting virtual IP in place in called keepalived.

So there I go, starting from 11-ish in the morning and complete the setup around 1:30-ish in the afternoon (thanks to my stomach that can't hold prolonged hunger)