i've a situation where the network we're building is
very low-traffic, but requires maximum uptime. the
budget is for all components to be duplicated to
allow for failover.
i've figured out various ways to do load-balancing and
failover at the router/nat level, and at L2, but have run
into a bit of a problem figuring how to use two solaris
boxes (firewalls) as gateways for all servers/clients
behind them in some kind of HA/failover configuration.
i'd like to minimize the client/server side configuration
as much as possible (and the environment may include
NT, Macs, or other such ilk which will not easily supporting
a useful routing protocol), so something like installing gated
on all of the boxes, and implementing an ospf environment
is an unsavory proposition.
i'd like something like HSRP, but for solaris/unix, and preferably
free.
i'm aware of several vendor HA solutions, but they are mostly
overkill for our application. i've looked into IRDP (rfc1256),
but i cant find any information about vendor support.
any pointers to relevant info would be appreciated, including
any general resources for HA/network redundancy/failover stuff
(preferably non-commercial).
-foo