OpenVPN multiple servers on the same subnet, high availability
- by andre
Hey everyone. Let me start by saying that my Linux experience isn't super awesome but I can usually find my way around things easily.
Over at work we have an OpenVPN setup that's been due for some improvement for a while now. The main server (tap mode) runs in our office, behind a rather slow DSL connection. The main problem is that, since I'm usually out of the office, every time I want to access something on the virtual network I have to go through that server to get anywhere else.
We have two servers up on 100 Mbit connections that we use for development and production purposes, about 3 more servers in the office (one of them behind a different T1 line for VOIP) and about two dozen clients who use the network on a daily basis from various locations.
We've had situations where network routing (outside of our control) would not allow people to reach our main OpenVPN server whilst the other locations were connectable. Also any time someone outside the office wants to fetch something from any of the servers (say, a 500 MB code repository), a whopping 20 KB/s download speed is just unacceptable these days (did I mention slow DSL? ok). We had to implement traffic shaping on this server since maxing out this connection was fairly trivial.
I had the thought of running two (or more) OpenVPN servers in the network. These would have to have the same subnet though, as our application relies on virtual network's IP addresses for some of its core functionality. The clients would also preferably retain the same IP addresses but that's not vital.
For simplicity, lets call the current server office and the second server I'm setting up, cloud. Call the server on the T1 phone.
This proved to be rather complex because as soon as I connect to cloud, I cannot see office. Any routes to a server that would go through office also do not work while I'm connected to cloud (no ping, nothing) and vice-versa. There's no rules for iptables that would be blocking the traffic either.
Recently I came across this article on linuxjournal but the solution they provide seems to only cover the use of two servers and somewhat outdated (can't even find much documentation, their wiki is offline). They also state that adding more servers would be a complex task.
Ideally I would like to keep the existing server office running the virtual network and also run the OpenVPN daemon on the cloud and phone servers (100 Mbit and very reliable connection, respectively) so that we're on safe ground in case of a hardware failure, DSL failure, etc.
So, in essence, I'm looking for a highly available OpenVPN solution (fix, patch, hack, tweak, whatever you want to call it) that will accept connections on multiple hosts (2 or more) whilst keeping the same IP address subnet regardless of the server to which you connect to.
Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post, I hope it gets the point across :P
