Re: [exim] heartbeat load balancing and exim

W B Hacker wrote:
> - Let ordinary DNS entries split the day-to-day load over twin machines
> by domain.tld

That's already happening and it works fine.

> - sync their mailstore (by any of several methods - from unseen routers
> through GMIRROR, nfs, or shared SAN)

Currently the mailstore, with its own MTA, is on a seperate server
outside the mx records (it also has imap). I am not convinced about
introducing a seperate mailstore on an NFS server or such. And imap
wouldn't work very well with it, unless it'd be running locally on the
mailstore (I doubt a netapp SAN can do that). NFS for example lacks
certain filesystem mechanisms imap needs, so for example opening an imap
mailbox shared would break. Anyways, it's that server I am brainstorming
about.

> - have each box watch the other (checkservice, monit - whatever).
>
> - IF/AS/WHEN a box sees its twin go offline, it picks up the IP of the
> failed box as an alias.

That sounds like a good idea.

> Restoral best done manually - but you were going to trouble-shoot and do
> maintenance anyway, no?

Obviously :-)

Greetings,
Jeroen