SMB server with failover node

[Miguel Gonçalves]

Dear BSDers,

I am going to install a FreeBSD 4.8 SMB server (using Samba)
in a corporate environment. Due to the small number of
clients on the network I will alocate 6 GB on the main server
hard drive for those users. In this main server I have 2
hard drives configured as a RAID-1 Vinum device.

What kind of graceful failures have users of Vinum noticed,
i.e., can the server enter degraded mode using only one drive
without much user intervention? Money is a concern but should
I move to hardware RAID (with hot swap option) to prevent user
intervention? I can only get near the machine at best in 3 or
4 hours (and the local users don't understand FreeBSD) but I
will monitor the machine daily remotely.

To better cope with failure of this server I am also installing
a second FreeBSD box that has much more hard disk space and
will sync those 6 GB of data every 15/30 minutes. What is the
best way to mirror the data: rsync or dump? What if there are
open files? Will rsync work?

If the main server fails I can instruct the local staff to
disconnect it from the network and execute a command at the
backup server's console. This command would change the server's
IP address and would start the Samba daemon.

Any ideas for a better setup?

Thanks for your time,
Miguel Goncalves

PS: Please CC me also.