6/3     I want to have apache run fault-tolerantly across two web servers.
        I've found http://eddie.sourceforge.net but nothing else that seems to
        be appropriate and free. I don't run Linux (Solaris 9, actually). Any
        suggestions? ok tnx
        \_ store the content on a central system and serve it out using
           nfs to the to systems. Then use dns round-robin or an l4 switch
           (load-balancer) so that if either one of the systems goes down
           you auto fall over to the other one. If nfs is two slow, ssh-rsync
           the content to the two systems periodically.
           \_ isn't the NFS server the weakest link here? also, i'm not
              currently running NFS and would rather avoid it for
              security and complexity reasons. but if this is the easiest/
              most stable way, then i'll look into it.
              \_ NFS is the weak link. Do an ssh-rsync from a third machine
                 or barring that, have one rsync to the other.
              \_ roundrobinDNS is only an answer if the goal is load-balancing
                 if the goal is 100% uptime, round-robin DNS is an anti-answer
                 \_ what is the answer for 100% uptime?
                 \_ dns round robin with small ttls will work pretty well
                    for a small-ish site.
        \_ Did you want just the webserver fault-tolerant or the whole system?
           What are your resources like and what factors are most important
           to you?
        \_ NFS isn't a weak link if it is a NetApp. The real question here
           is what the budget is. There are even appliances to do this. As
           the above poster says, what are the factors here? Does
           performance matter and so on.
           \_ Budgets are largely frozen. The alternative is downtime (which
              is what has been going on the past 10 years). Performance isn't
              an issue, I'd just rather not get calls if a machine dies.
              I have 3 E250's to work with. They also do mail and DNS... I
              figured I'd start w/ balancing http and move on from there.
              \_ Look into load balancing with Apache mod_proxy.  Simple
                 to set up, and you can do more interesting things for
                 heartbeat.
        \_ Take a look at putting a web-cache in front of your http servers.
           With squid you can set it up so that it fetches pages from your
           http server when it doesn't have them and then serve them out to
           clients.