Can FREENAS Automatically FailOver to a 2nd FREENAS Server?

[Cytomax]

I would like to setup 2 FreeNas boxes in my office....

Box#1 would be a live box....
Box#2 would be a perfect clone of Box#1 and it would be waiting for Box#1 to go down and automatically take its place.

Does this exist in FREENAS?



I searched for FailOver and kept getting information on link aggregation.

This is an old link showing it cant as of 2011
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...vent-of-a-disk-controller-or-nic-failure.479/

This is supposedly a failover demo yet they dont show they did it.
http://www.freenas.org/blog/freenas-zfs-the-indestructible-duo-except-for-the-hard-drives-2/

 

[danb35]

I believe that TrueNAS, iXSystems' commercial product, has this feature, but FreeNAS doesn't.

 

[Cytomax]

Thanks for the quick reply..

In THEORY....

If i were to purchase 2 FREENAS Mini's

Deploy Box#1
and
Box #1 has some catastrophic PSU/MOBO Failure...

i can simply remove my all my hard drives and USB drive from Box#1 and insert them into Box #2..

Should Box #2 IN THEORY keep chugging along?

Would there be any sort of configuration needed apart from making sure Box #2 got the same IP address as Box#1?

 

[Johnny Fartpants]

You could take periodic snapshots of your primary system and send them (replicate) to your backup system. The only difference if you were to failover would be your config file. Therefore you could either A. Every change you make on primary server like adding a new user for example duplicate that process on the backup server or B. Keep a backup of the config file on your primary (which is always a good idea anyway) and then in the event of disaster upload that file to backup server reboot and you up and running again. Yes an IP or DNS switch would be required unless you wanted to point clients in a different direction.

Regarding failover CARP is what TrueNAS uses.

 

[Cytomax]

Thank you for the reply

Now how lets take it to the final step.....

Lets say Box#1 has jails and/or VM's using virtual box template...

Lets say i use Rsync to sync EVERYTHING from Box#1 to Box #2

As long as i transfer that "Config" File you mentioned in your post would all my Jails and VM's be good to go?

 

[snaptec]

You could just use replication and config files.
But that is far away from a real failover or HA Solution.
If box 1 fails, running vms and jails are dead.
If you Start them on box 2 ist is like they got their power Plug back in


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[wblock]

f you Start them on box 2 ist is like they got their power Plug back in

Minus all the stuff that was lost up to the failure.

And of course this all assumes that the event that killed Box#1 somehow did not harm the storage drives.

 

[MisterIce]

If you got your replication setup properly, you could use a DNS technique called 'round robin'. How this works is you configure 2 entries in your DNS or hosts file with the same hostname but the 2 ip-addresses of your freenas boxes.

How I enter my freenas box ...

http://freenas/ -> 192.168.1.XXX

If you'd enter this to your DNS:
freenas 192.168.1.<ip-box-1>
freenas 192.168.1.<ip-box-2>

Your browser will always go for the ip in the first entry ... If that one failes (offline; whatever), it will go to the 2nd ip address.

Just google for 'round robin' if you want to know more.

 

[snaptec]

Normal replication task is only every 5 minutes. If you edit a file on fn1, fn1 fails, you will lost the edited file, except you didnt do anything the last 5 minutes



If you really want something like that, have a look at pacemaker corosync and drbd for getting an idea how it could work.


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[danpoleary]

Would HAST not work to meet his requirements? https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/disks-hast.html. It says that it works with any file system supported by FreeBSD. If both systems are pre-configured the EXACT same way of course.

 

[Cytomax]

My network is not very big complex or secure.....


i just want a freenas box sharing some files and running a couple windows 7 VM's......

everyone uses the same username password... no AD or DC... just a few windows 7 boxes on a workgroup all using the same login....

All I want is basic hardware redundancy that if the hardware fails I'll only be down a couple hours max and minimal effort to get back running...

I'm thinking the best thing for me with MINIMAL configuration would be just remove all HD and USB thumb drive from freenas box 1 and insert into freemasonry box 2....

If there is something that could automagically fail over to a freenas clone that's already up and running then that would be great... if I lose 1 or 2 hours of work because an hourly sync didn't take place before the down time im okay with that... I will look into hast ty for the suggestion

 

[danb35]

All I want is basic hardware redundancy that if the hardware fails I'll only be down a couple hours max and minimal effort to get back running...

That's a very different question than failover HA, which is what you initially asked about, and this is very easily accomplished.

I'm thinking the best thing for me with MINIMAL configuration would be just remove all HD and USB thumb drive from freenas box 1 and insert into freemasonry box 2....

Freemasonry box 2? Sounds interesting. (-: That's the simplest answer, and will work just fine, as long as the network hardware on box 2 is the same as on box 1. Otherwise, you might need to manually reconfigure the network interface. Everything else should Just Work.

 

[snaptec]

Then a simple zfs replication would be enough.
If FN1 fails, you can user fn2 with a bit of reconfiguring the clients and the data from the last hour..

 

[Cytomax]

Ty for the response...I was kinda hoping initially there would be an easy way to configure what i had originally hoped for which is that
FN box 2 clones FN box 1 and can automatically take over if FN box 1 has some sort of harware failure.... but I guess that kinda setup is way above my paygrade (Im doing this for free/fun for the office).... the dummy way is probably just pull the HD and thumb drive and put it inside a another identical freenas box....

 

[snaptec]

The tools I posted are open source. You don't need to pay for that. You need "just" the knowhow.
But even in 2016, a HA Cluster is no "click and working" thing...

 

[Cytomax]

Ty for the suggestions I will look it over tonight and see if it's something I can learn an implement at a later date... I'll also look at hast as well