NFS server fail-over - how do you do it?

[Andrea Venturoli]

** Reply to note from "adp" <dap99 at i-55.com> Mon, 31 May 2004 12:33:24 -0500


> I was thinking that 
> since NFS is udp-based, that if the primary NFS server failed, and the 
> secondary assumed the primary NFS server's IP address, that things would at 
> least return to normal (of course, any writes that had been in progress 
> would fail horribly). That doesn't seem to be the case. During a test we 
> killed the main NFS server and brought up the NFS IP as an alias on the 
> backup. Didn't work. Has anyone tried anything like this?

The idea makes me shiver, as I'm quite sure there would be data losses.

However, if you are so brave... have you tried freevrrpd?

The problem might be that clients still have that IP associated with the old MAC address in their tables. VRRP is a
protocol designed to handel failovers that should also deal with this, by changing the IP *and* the MAC address of the
card.

 bye
        av.