thoughts on setting up an emergency server

[Janina Sajka]

So, you want what the IT industry calls "faul tolerance?" Good for you.

Do you have a bootable CD ROM? Why not put the basics on a bootable CDR?

Scaling up from there, the next step, imho, would be a second hd mirroring the first. Scaling further, a second
controller for the second hd. Beyond that, I'm afraid, it's a second machine.

Gregory Nowak writes:
> From: Gregory Nowak <greg at romuald.net.eu.org>
> 
> Hi all.
> 
> I've been thinking of the possibility of a dark day when some piece of hardware should fail in my server, leaving it inoperable, and me up a creek without a paddle.
> 
> I usually wouldn't have the time to setup another box to temporarily replace the failed one. Instead, I'd like to have things already set, so that I can make some minor tweaks if need be, and let a replacement run.
> 
> I do have one more box with gnu/linux that I can configure as a server just in case.
> However, doing so would mean that I would need to keep in mind that it should be a backup server any minute, and that I can't mess around with it like I could otherwise.
> 
> What came into my head is to put zipslack/speak on a 250 meg zip disk. Then, should something go wrong with the main box, I can hook up my parallel zip drive into another box, and let it run until I was able to get the main box back online without being under pressure.
> 
> I would strip zipslack to the minimum needed to run web, dns, and mail.
> 
> The advantage would of course be that it would all be ready to go.
> The disadvantage would be the 250 meg limit.
> 
> I was wondering if those of you who run your own domains have prepared for the dark day I described.
> 
> If so, I would appreciate it if you could please share your plan b for my brain to chew on and/or resynthesize to meet my needs.
> 
> Some people may just ask why don't I take a couple of hours, install slackware on some other partition some where, and I'd be ready to go.
> 
> It wouldn't be that simple, since I'd need to build software such as qmail from sources, and I have also pretty heavily modified my current slackware server's startup scripts to meet my specific needs.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
> Greg
> 
> 
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-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175