On 9/21/2011 10:06 AM, David Brown wrote: > OK, I'll have a look at that. If I get a redundant setup with CARP > working then there is not the same need for raid - the whole router can > be switched out. But it is still nice to have, and makes recovery and > rebuilding much easier.
True on both counts, though if your backup hardware is comparable/identical it's even more true. If your backup hardware is not as powerful and you would be putting it under a load it maybe can't handle for long periods, then raid would still be important, but not critical. >> The hardware doesn't have to be the same, but the number of assigned >> NICs and the order in which they were assigned must be the same. >> > > OK. My current hardware has 2 motherboard GBit NICs and a 4x100Mb card > - when I buy a new system, it will probably be a little newer and be all > GBit NICs (and faster processor, etc.). This would then be the primary > system. It is absolutely fine that a switchover to the secondary system > means a loss in speed of the links, as long as the links all work! Yeah that should be fine. There are some people who fail over from large systems to a little ALIX so they can squeak by until the main unit gets repaired. Saves on power, but depending on the kind of load involved it may not be possible/ideal. > I am (as yet) very unfamiliar with FreeBSD. But as far as I can see, > the names of the interfaces is dependent on the drivers, unlike Linux > (which typically calls them eth0, eth1, etc., regardless of the > drivers). In Linux, you can use the "udev" rules to set specific names > for the devices based on the MAC address of the port - that keeps them > consistent even if you swap cards around to different ports. Can I do > something similar with pfSense so that the NIC names are consistent even > though the two routers have different hardware? There isn't a way to tie it down by MAC address, but the idea has been tossed around before. When you assign a card in pfSense it goes with a specific name (em0, em1, vr0, vr1, etc) but if the cards are swapped around and the ordering of the drivers changed, the association may not be as expected. If the type of card changes, it would make you reassign the NICs to accommodate the change. > Incidentally, can I assume that FreeBSD will support the NICs on the > motherboard and add-in cards, without having to be too specific about > the types? I am not trying to use anything too esoteric, such as 10 GB > cards or tcp offload engines - just a small Dell or IBM rack server with > a four-port Ethernet card. Best not to assume anything, the FreeBSD hardware list is out there and easy to compare against. pfSense 2.0 is based on FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, though the em/igb driver is a bit newer than the one shipped with that so if you have Intel cards it may be supported even if not on the list. Only real way to know is to try. If you are using multi-port NICs, especially if you decide to use amd64, you'll probably want to employ some of the tweaks listed here: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards Jim _______________________________________________ List mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list
