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we have two NAS as our storage with data sync. ips for the NAS are as follows 10.10.0.5 10.10.0.6 we want to create a scenario such that when a client machine requests data from the servers request should be routed to one of the servers automatically (in a load balancing mannner).

and if any of the NAS is down the request should be forwarded to the other that is alive

how should we go about this? please pu some light on this topic

edit: they are custom built nas boxes with freenas running on them and smb for file share and client side are mixed of linux and windows systems.

i have yet got a solution for this anybody out there to help....?

stackedup
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    You're going to need to provide more information before getting any useful answers. What type of NAS? What OS are your clients running? What network protocol are your clients using to pull files off of the NAS? – EEAA Nov 28 '10 at 17:45

2 Answers2

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If you're in a Microsoft-centric network, DFS will do exactly what you're hoping for. Unfortunately, it doesn't play well with clients running non-microsoft operating systems.

EEAA
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  • And that right there is why we're not using it at work. Too many Macs out in our userbase. – sysadmin1138 Nov 29 '10 at 03:41
  • Ditto here. Wish it would work, though, cause given the appropriate environment, it's a pretty nice solution. – EEAA Nov 30 '10 at 01:28
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A lot of that depends on what your file-sharing protocols are. Some are more tolerant of that than others. For instance, NFS is much more tolerant of that than SMB is. In any case your clients will be connecting to a third IP that is virtual.

Some NAS software actually allows this out of the box. You don't say what you're using for your NAS, but it might be there.

If you have the option, the Gluster NAS software package does this out of the box and by design.

If you have root access to your NAS devices you may be able to use DBRM for sync (from the sounds of it might have already done this) and then leverage IPVS for your virtual IP. NFS would work best with this, Samba can work with this but relies on client-side reconnection for failover (just like Microsoft Fail-Over clusters, actually).

If you can afford them, hardware load-balancers provide a lot of options.

sysadmin1138
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