[YLUG] Server purchase

[Arthur Clune]

On 20 May 2006, at 11:55, Richard G. Clegg wrote:

> I'm torn on this subject.  However, there are only two people who  
> are capable of restoring the system at the moment and quite often  
> we're both away at the same time.

It's tricky, but personally I have a sinking feeling when I hear the  
words 'database', 'replication'
and 'failover' all in the same system.

If it was me, I'd go with two servers. Run everything on the big  
server-spec one. Replicate to the
spare (cheap desktop if needed) in master->slave configuration. Do  
not have auto failover or load
balancing, but have a very well documented and simple process for  
swapping them over ("Run this
script as root and unplug the master from the network" should be all  
anyone else needs to know).
Then the script would just have to change the IP to that of the main  
server and tell mysql it's
now in master mode/no replication/whatever.

Arthur

-- 
Arthur Clune arthur at clune.org
Electronic infomation tampers with your mind. Babylon Zoo