Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol implementation ( site1, site2 )

    FIXME: This link died, anybody know where it went?

    This is purely for redundancy. Two machines with their own IP address and MAC Address together create a third IP Address and MAC Address, which is virtual. Originally intended purely for routers, which need constant MAC addresses, it also works for other servers.

    The beauty of this approach is the incredibly easy configuration. No kernel compiling or patching required, all userspace.

    Just run this on all machines participating in a service:

    # vrrpd -i eth0 -v 50 10.0.0.22

    And you are in business! 10.0.0.22 is now carried by one of your servers, probably the first one to run the vrrp daemon. Now disconnect that computer from the network and very rapidly one of the other computers will assume the 10.0.0.22 address, as well as the MAC address.

    I tried this over here and had it up and running in 1 minute. For some strange reason it decided to drop my default gateway, but the -n flag prevented that.

    This is a 'live' fail over:

    64 bytes from 10.0.0.22: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.2 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.22: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=0.2 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.22: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=16.8 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.22: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=1.8 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.22: icmp_seq=7 ttl=255 time=1.7 ms

    Not *one* ping packet was lost! Just after packet 4, I disconnected my P200 from the network, and my 486 took over, which you can see from the higher latency.