Getting started with webserver clustering.
- by Ernie
I work for a small ISP, and we host about 250 domains and all the stuff that goes along with that: DNS, mail, spam filtering, and backups. Currently, we have separate DNS servers (two of them) and mail servers (outgoing mail is actually on the secondary DNS server, but was previously on its own server). In the past, this was done as an insurance measure. The last thing we need is for some doofus (usually yours truly) to hose a server, taking out DNS and mail right along with it, or for spammers to jam our incoming SMTP server, preventing outgoing mail from being sent too. In the past, this was a problem, and our servers were set up the way they are now to combat it.
However, clustering solutions like Sun's Cobalt RAQ (in days of olde) and Virtualmin appear to cater to an all-in-one approach, then deal with failures through redundant servers. I have avoided this thus far, but we've been using Virtualmin on our web server for a while now, and I'd like to expand into using it for a high availability cluster. Our networking partner has recently built a datacenter that has eliminated all of our other bugaboos like network, cooling, and power issues, so now the only thing left to go wrong is me hosing a server, which happened earlier this month.
One of the bigger reasons we've avoided going this route is because our hardware requirements aren't particularly high. One server easily handles all the sites we host (most of them are flat sites). Also, load-balancing routers tend to be expensive and complicated. All that I'm really expecting to do is building a two-node cluster for redundancy so that when I hose a server (however rare that might be), we're not out for 8-12 hours while I rebuild it.
What I need to know is how to get started, and if I'm really in a position to bother with this kind of thing at all.
