Samba, nmbd, HA

[Richard Sharpe]

Hi,

At 04:48 AM 1/28/99 +1100, you wrote:
>
>Has anyone ever setup a pair of fileservers running Samba such that each
>server can takeover the other server's functionality and identity?

I have done some preliminary work.  I am planning to run Eddie on two
machines that are exactly the same.

I have set up the two machines so that one can take over the function of
the other, as far as Samba is concerned.

>It seems to me that a Samba HA setup would be very similar to a virtual
>server Samba setup. In other words, use the 'include' directive in
>conjunction with the %L variable to make each smbd process act as the
>server named by the client.

I didn't bother with this.  I had an alias on the machine which is also to
be taken over by the backup machine.  The NetBIOS name of the server is
bound to the alias that is also being swapped around.

>So far so good.
>
>But in an HA setup, when one server fails and the other one takes over
>it's IP addresses and services, the NetBIOS identity of the failed
>server must also be passed to the remaining server.
>
>How should one accomplish this? Can it be as simple as restarting nmbd
>with a different config file naming the failed server's NetBIOS name and
>aliases as aliases of the server that takes over?

My plan is that smbd and nmbd will run on only one of the two machines, and
Samba will be started on the second machine when a fail-over occurs. It
will take over the alias, and then Samba will start and advertise its
NetBIOS name against that address, and all will be sweet.

>Or should one use the 'bind interfaces only' and 'interfaces'
>configuration parameters in two configuration files and run two nmbd
>processes on the server that takes over?

I used these ... I am not near the machine that has the setup at the
moment, but can post the smb.conf when I am back.

[Deletia]

>
>I'm using Samba 1.9.18pl10 on Solaris 2.6 systems.

Move to 2.0.0.

I have tested this stuff manually.  That is, drop the main server, start up
Samba on the backup and make sure that all the PCs can still access things.

Next step is when we get Eddie going, to test out real fail-over.

>Nico



Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe at ns.aus.com, NIC-Handle:RJS96
NS Computer Software and Services P/L, 
Ph: +61-8-8281-0063, FAX: +61-8-8250-2080, 
Samba (Team member), Linux, Apache, Digital UNIX, AIX, C, ...