Fallback server with Network Professional Ed. on Ubuntu

[DCC]

Hi,

Planning on purchasing the Netwrok Professional Edition and currently evaluating its trial, the question of a fallbackserver occurred. Our main goal is to provide a hosted ZCS environment for customers, with the possibility to login to an alternative webinterface and/or use an alternative POP/IMAP server when our primary server goes down.

In concreto, we have the following questions :

1. is this possible at all with one license ?
2. is there a possibility to synchronize both servers in an automated way ?
3. is there any documentation on this ?

We are using the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS server.

[mmorse]

License just affects the number of users services available-not the number of machines you can install zimbra on:

Originally Posted by gmsmith

There are no additional software licenses required from Zimbra to introduce a cluster, however introducing a cluster requires some common storage between the two servers (shared disc, san, something..), fencing, and some other things. You may want to look at: 1.3.Â*Cluster Infrastructure

Yes I know you said ubuntu but bear with me-reasoning i'm mentioning RH is because you will get plenty of support from Zimbra on it:

Originally Posted by mmorse

A little more involved than that-most make use of a SAN
RHCS methods:
Clustering on single-node config
Clustering on multi-node configs
-and people often fail to follow the multi-node cluster upgrading procedures for that

Your not changing the amount of users-no license change to Zimbra. RHCS pricing though.

For large companies or those who want serious reliability for the mailboxes-it's worth doing. -everyone's needs are different, and there are many ways to do clustering as well, but zimbra (the company) can't be expected to cover them all with support

WIKI multi-server stuff
OS multi-server install guide
NE multi-server install guide

Now if your set on ubuntu-you might see if this can do the job:
Ubuntu -- heartbeat

Also look into:
LVS
The Linux Virtual Server Project
IPVS
Linux-HA heartbeat package
Piranha -another red hat product
Keepalived
The list goes on...and on...

[Klug]

Clustering is only supported on Red Hat (with Red Hat Cluster Suite), anything else won't.

[mmorse]

There's more than one way for him to make a 'fallback'

RHCS on RHEL=supported in NE

I didn't know how fixed on ubuntu he was-that's why I gave him other ideas to 'see if this can do the job'

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by mmorse

I didn't know how fixed on ubuntu he was-that's why I gave him other ideas to 'see if this can do the job'

A cluster would be the best solution for what he needs but we only support RHCS on RHEL.

[mmorse]

DCC, ran accross this if your interested:
http://www.zimbra.com/forums/adminis...mbra-drbd.html

Originally Posted by andreychek

Hey Bill,

Though not supported by RedHat, Ubuntu or Zimbra, another way to accomplish failover would be to use DRBD and Heartbeat.

DRBD is basically a form of "network RAID", and heartbeat monitors a server and can make a backup come online in case of a problem.

The setup is described in this thread:

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2845&highlight=drbd

Good luck!
-Eric

[DCC]

My apologies for this delayed reply. Looks like we have a lot of RTFM'ing to do ;)

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies & links, much obliged !