On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 14:37 -0700, Jeroen van Aart wrote: > Or is there a way to access a server directly, automatically, when a > load balancer fails? Maybe I am missing some obvious things.
You are :) If you're using Linux boxes, and you have only two - forgetting for a moment the obvious issue of a shared mailstore - then they can act simultaneously as: = load balancers = high availability servers = MTA, MSA = IMAP / POP / Web servers Using LVS - http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ - which is built in to the Linux kernel. Heartbeat gives you the HA part Heartbeat can trigger ldirectord, the linux-ha project's load balancing manager Exim does the MTA, MSA part You choose what to do the rest with :) The difficulty with a two box solution is the last part - how to achieve a shared mailbox store. Oh, hang on, it's not *that* hard if you use something like DRBD - http://www.drbd.org/ - which Heartbeat can also manage... So, with a pair of boxes and a reasonably recent version of Linux (I choose RHEL based distros from personal preference and familiarity, but that's a religious fight I'd rather see raised here!) you've got it all. No need for a third box, no SPOF in sight. Be ready, however, for a learning curve... Graeme -- ## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
