Exercise 5 (Part II): Server Backup

In our exercise, we were tasked to do a network configuration where a passive server backs up the active server whenever it is not available. We used three computers to accomplish this exercise: (1) an active server, (2) a passive server and (3) a client.

Here are the steps that we did:
1. We installed Heartbeat, Pacemaker and Apache to the computers who acted as servers.

2. We assigned a static IP address to each server:
     192.168.21.2 - active server
     192.168.21.3 - passive server

3. Next, we changed the hostname of the servers (server1 - active; server2 - passive) then edited /etc/hosts file:
   

192.168.21.1 is the cluster IP which will be accessed by the client.

4. We edited the configuration files of heartbeat for both servers:
     a. /etc/ha.d/authkeys
   

tells heartbeat to use the key #1 which is onethreeseven as md5 password

     b. /etc/ha.d/ha.cf

       c. /etc/ha.d/haresources

5. We started heartbeat on both servers using /etc/init.d/heartbeat command.
6. Finally, we tried if our set up worked.

We accessed 192.168.21.1 (cluster IP).
Then, we shutdown server1; server2 (192.168.21.3) took over.

Reference:
http://www.langeder.org/wordpress/high-available-server-using-heartbeat/