Re: The Wonderful World of Linux

["Martin Rowe" <dbg400.net@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Joe

I have a similar-ish setup for my web site & email server. I have a
Debian virtual machine running Apache + TWiki + Exim (with
greylisting), hosted on an Ubuntu server. I have a clone of that
virtual machine running on my desktop system (Ubuntu again). The clone
uses rsync to synchronise content and configuration several times a
day. I also take periodic backups of the VMs when I do any major
changes. On my Linksys firewall I've set port forwarding to the main
VM for www+smtp, which I can point to the backup VM if the main one is
likely to be unavailable for an extended period. The load on my
desktop system (which runs 24x7 anyway) running the backup server is
minimal and so far it's worked well.

At some point I plan to flash the firmware on the firewall with one of
the open source variants so I can script in a failover if the main VM
is unavailable.

I have a slightly more involved setup for our TWiki+CVS server at
work, which has two VMs tracking it, plus it backs up daily on a
weekly rotation to an NFS mount on our System i.

Regards, Martin