[Box Backup] Server redundancy and backup servers

[boxbackup@fluffy.co.uk]

No I don't think you missed my point.

I was trying to make it work more automagically so that the administrator
could let it take care of itself more.

I suppose you could (make things more complicated) add an affinity value
so that the faster servers would get used first.

The only way to overcome the problem with all the servers except one
failing would be to have the machines switch primary backups every X
times.

I suppose the client could query the server to see how busy it is, and
then switch, but this all makes things more complicated...

So perhaps leaving well enough alone is best.

Rick

On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Ben Summers wrote:

>
> On 24 Sep 2004, at 14:08, rprice@freeshell.org wrote:
>
> > I think it would be a good idea to have the client choose the initial,
> > and
> > failover server from the list in a random fashion, and then prefer the
> > last server it talked to.
> >
> > So the algorithm would use the same code whenever it was unable to
> > contact
> > the last used server, and in the case of the first run, there would be
> > no
> > last used server.
> >
> > This way you don't have to configure the client to start with a
> > particular
> > server, it just works out.
>
> What if you have your primary servers on a really fast connection, but
> with the backup ones at a less desirable location? You might want to
> keep control over where the client will connect to make sure it always
> talks to the primary location.
>
> The list of servers has to be got from somewhere, so you've got to
> configure it with something. So if you want to load-balance it as you
> suggest, just pick a random server when you configure it in the first
> place.
>
> The other problem is what happens in a failure situation. If there are
> four servers, and three go down, then the backup clients will all talk
> to the remaining one for ever more.
>
> Or have I missed the point somewhere? I've tried to devise a scheme
> where the administrator has control over what happens.
>
> Ben
>
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