Until recently, I was a student employee at the Oregon State University Open Source Lab. My career there ended, like many, with that painful process known as graduation. I got invaluable experience at the lab, not the least of which being the knowledge gained as their main (only) database administrator. One of my great pleasures in that position, was learning how to configure MySQL replication and manage clusters of replicating database servers. Even the simple case of a single master and a single slave has its edge cases.

The second of the two-part Scalable Linux Clusters article. This second part features the addition of Heartbeat and ldirectord to the network started in Part I.

Whether you are perusing mailing lists or reading the large LVS-HOWTO, much of the available information on creating a high-availability Linux cluster can be difficult to sift through. Relevant information shares space with implementation details dating back to version 2.0 of the Linux kernel and comments that are often ambiguous at best.

This two-part article attempts to present an up-to-date tutorial on setting up LVS for your network, with an emphasis on designing a system that matches your infrastructure’s needs.