First, the question: How to build redundancy on a "users" server?
What's behind it: When our main users server goes down, no one can log in to check their e-mail. So the problem as it was presented this morning was to research some way to make it so that if that server goes down, users still have a way of getting to their e-mail or login to their accounts for that matter. Now, the setup we have is a bit different from most people I'm sure. Incoming e-mail flows as follows:
Internet -> MX server -> spool server (NIS+ slave)
Our "users" server - also our NIS+ master - (which is a totally different machine) does an NFS mount of the spool server on /var/mail/ and voila, e-mail. When our users use imap/pop to check/get/send e-mail, they log in to that "users" server to do so. No one communicates directly with the spool server. So when the "users" server goes down, no one can get to their e-mail. The question: what kind of redundancy can I build so that if that server were to go down, that users can still log in (to -something-) and still access everything they need. Presumably this would be a separate machine and that the fall back would be transparent to them. I just don't know how or what.
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H | I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape somewhere.
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Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley@xxxxxxxxxx> . 303.442.6410 x130
IT Director / SysAdmin / WebSmith . 800.441.3873 x130
Photo Craft Imaging . 3550 Arapahoe Ave. #6
http://www.pcraft.com ..... . . . Boulder, CO 80303, U.S.A.
