Server Admin 10.4 Help

Configuring the Master Server for IP Failover

Configuring the master server for IP failover is simple. All you have to do is add or edit two entries in the /etc/hostconfig file and then restart the server.

  1. Add or edit the FAILOVER_BCAST_IPS entry in /etc/hostconfig to specify the addresses to which to send heartbeat messages.

    For example, if the primary IP address of the master server is 17.1.0.50 and the secondary IP address is 10.1.0.2, you can add the following line to /etc/hostconfig to broadcast the message over the two networks:

    FAILOVER_BCAST_IPS="10.1.0.255 17.1.0.255"

    However, it's more efficient for your network switch to send the heartbeat messages to specific addresses:

    FAILOVER_BCAST_IPS="10.1.0.3 17.1.0.51"

    This line instructs the master server to send the heartbeat messages to the primary and secondary IP addresses of the backup server.

    Note: To edit the /etc/hostconfig file, you must be root. Use the sudo command when opening this file using your preferred command-line editor.

  2. Add or edit the FAILOVER_EMAIL_RECIPIENT entry to specify the email address to send notifications to.

    If you don't add this entry, email notifications will go to root.

  3. Restart the server.

The IPFailover startup item launches heartbeatd during startup. Upon launch, heartbeatd checks its argument list, moves to the background, and periodically sends out "heartbeat" messages to the addresses specified in the FAILOVER_BCAST_IPS entry in /etc/hostconfig.

Keywords: khelp ksa