Redundant Samba Server

[Jochen Friedrich]

Hi,

On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Burch, Phil wrote:

> I am not to sure about this but: As far as I understand, in a Windows NT
> network the PDC and SDC have different netbios names but can both 'handle'
> domain logins, the SDC is set to a lower 'election level' so that it becomes
> the PDC if the PDC goes down.

> From: Gong Wei [mailto:ccegongw at nus.edu.sg]
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Is it possible to set up two Samba servers to minimize the service down
> time, using current 2.0.3 under Linux?
> 
> We plan to setup two servers as master/slave.  So normally the slave server
> will not in production (nmbd and smbd will not be started).  It only starts
> if it detects the master server, whose NetBIOS name is MASTER1 fail.

Well, in the PDC/BDC scenario, all you get is a "high avaliable"
logon service, but not file or print services. 

I would suggest looking into
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/ALPHA/linux-ha/High-Availability-HOWTO.html
and make the samba service itself high available. There already is some
early software to exchange heart-beat between two server so the backup
will start its application and switch its IP number once the primary
server goes down.

Cheers,
Jochen