On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 1:42 PM, annb annb <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi list! > > > I am running a website with several thousand of images on a Mac Mini. I have > done that for about a year but I feel that I need something more secure then > a single Mac mini and a WD elements external USB drive for the images. If my > Mac Mini goes dow for example the website is gone and that is not > acceptable. > > > I want to build a solution with HAPROXY. I want to add more Mac Minis in the > future running Round Robin. I am thinking of buying a Synology NAS of some > kind to store all images. Maybe with 10 harddrives to begin with and expand > when I need to. Later on I will build a similar system in a different > geographical position. Lets call these two system A and B. > > > Lets talk about system A. > > I understand that I need at least 3 Mac minis to make this happen. Mac mini > 1 running HAPROXY (round robin). Mac mini 2 and 3 running the website. So if > Mac mini 2 or 3 goes down for some reason the other one will continue run > the website. It will also be much easier to upgrade one Mac mini if I can > just shut it down and the other one will still run the website. > > > I think I understand the concept of HAPROXY so far. Now to the part I don't > understand. > > > Do I need a storage array for every Mac mini I have (Mac mini 2 and 3) or > should they share a single storage array? I have been looking at ISCSI and > it seems to be the way to go but I have just learn that it can only be one > initiator connected to the same target at the same time. > > > Lets talk about system B. > > If I build a similar system like A but on a different geographical position, > how should system A and B interact with each other (with HAPROXY) to make > everything secure? Can I continue to use HAPROXY and round robin takes care > of 4 Mac minis? > > > I have more questions but let's start here and see where it takes me.
Hi annb, First, a single couple of servers is enough: both servers can host HAProxy and the webserver at the same time. Or you can split layers on different servers, hence you'll need 4 servers: 2 HAProxy frontends and 2 webservers. whatever you use, you must ensure HAProxy high availability: keepalived is your friend for this purpose. It will failover IPs from an HAProxy box to the other one, ensuring frontend high-availability. Last but not least, you can't use iSCSI for the storage, because you can't mount it from several points and read/write on it in the mean time (a few file system allow this, but performance can drop drastically). I would rather use NFS and mount the share on both webservers. Baptiste
