OT : Disaster recovery?

[Colocation Colocation]

I was considering virtualisation (xen enterprise) but really it didnt make
sense unless i had at least two machines.

I agree it would be absolutely awesome because you can just instant
snapshots and save them as backups. You can also bounce vm's between
physical servers quite easily, maintaining service regardless of hardware
failures! I believe you can do LIVE transfers which manages to switch stuff
even during live transactions with something like a 200ms switch over point.

I also the the idea of building beefy boxes so that i can consolidate
web-servers, e-mail servers and database servers all together. You can then
ofcourse add additional servers and transfer vm's around as your needs
change.





On 26/10/06, Kevin Miller <Kevin_Miller at ci.juneau.ak.us> wrote:
>
> One thing we're going to be looking at RSN* is virtualization.  Be nifty
> to set up MailScanner, etc. as a virtual machine.  Then if you box goes
> down, you just start up another load the virtual snapshot and away you
> go.  The 'snapshot' could live on a completely different server and be
> backed up just like a regular file then retrieved instantly as needed.
>
> Of course, you'd have to save it afresh every now and then when you
> updated MS, clamav, sendmail, etc.  But that's gotta be a lot easier
> than building a new box from scratch!
>
> Bear in mind that I haven't yet done this yet, so maybe someone that has
> can chime in if there's some significant gotchas...
>
> ...Kevin
> *Real Soon Now
> --
> Kevin Miller                Registered Linux User No: 307357
> CBJ MIS Dept.               Network Systems Admin., Mail Admin.
> 155 South Seward Street     ph: (907) 586-0242
> Juneau, Alaska 99801        fax: (907 586-4500
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of
> Colocation Colocation
> Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 4:29 PM
> To: MailScanner discussion
> Subject: Re: OT : Disaster recovery?
>
>
> Of course you are right! I do have a secondary MX setup to catch all the
> mail if the primary goes down. That still leaves me having to reinstall
> the primary as soon as possible!
>
> I've just done a full backup of my mail server using mondo - now to do
> some testing of the restore process!
>
>
>
> On 26/10/06, Peter Russell <pete at enitech.com.au> wrote:
>
>
>
>         Colocation Colocation wrote:
>         > So I've just spent the past 3 weeks setting up and tweaking my
>         > Mailscanner installation. I've done every possible tweak and
> gone
>         > through everything with a magnifying glass and it all looks
> great.
>         >
>         > So now my thoughts turn to backups. How best should i protect
> my
>         > investment? I cannot yet justify a second box for redundancy
> so if all
>         > goes wrong i will need to be able to quickly get my mail
> server back online.
>         >
>
>         Are you sure you cant afford redundancy? Sounds like that's what
> you
>         need when you say you want to get your mail server back online
> quickly.
>
>         Consider a redundant machine even its an old server or a PC
> (depending
>         on your demands) and then at least you can receive mail while
> you repair
>         your main machine if required. Even if the second one is only a
> backup MX...
>         --
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>         mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
>         http://lists.mailscanner.info/mailman/listinfo/mailscanner
>
>         Before posting, read http://wiki.mailscanner.info/posting
>
>         Support MailScanner development - buy the book off the website!
>
>
>
> --
> MailScanner mailing list
> mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
> http://lists.mailscanner.info/mailman/listinfo/mailscanner
>
> Before posting, read http://wiki.mailscanner.info/posting
>
> Support MailScanner development - buy the book off the website!
>
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