 README file for FreeHA, version 0.9.3

"Free-HA" is an application that lets you set up your own
 'High Availability' cluster (On UNIX, or a reasonable facsimile).

Free-HA is currently designed around the idea that the most common 'cluster'
is a simple failover cluster, where you have an active node, and a standby
node that takes over operation in case the active node goes
down/crashes/whatever.


If you want practical "here's how you set it up" instructions, go read the
INSTALL document now, as well as the RUNNING document.



 The rest of this file is propaganda/ranting

     ============================================================


People pay thousands of dollars for XXXXCluster software, for somethat that
can inherently be accomplished with not that much coding.

The expensive cluster software is usually very flexible, and can handle a
whole lot of configuration and customization... that most people never use.

So, I figured it was about time to make public a free way of doing what
'most people' really need under UNIX.

A part of this project is shellscripts, which are then based around a
highly portable demon written in C that should compile and run on anything
that supports BSD-style socket libraries.

The presumed massive amount of shellscripting on the front end,
is to figure out how to get the information the demon needs to start.
Then there is a bunch more scripting on the BACK end, for startup and
shutdown of services.


I started this little project before I came across
  http://www.linux-ha.org/
If that work was a decently engineered cross-platform product from the start,
instead of being blatantly linux-specific, I would have stopped my work at
this point, and joined that effort. But since it isnt, I wont.
Also of apparent interest is www.openclustergroup.org, but that does not seem
to currently provide concrete tools that solve the common need, either.
BTW: I have not looked at code from either of those two projects.

At some point, this project may expand into supporting multi-machine high
availability, with many more tweaks. This is why I am starting with the
premise of a broadcast network for heartbeats, rather than simply listing IP
addresses. But first, I have to get the basic stuff happy.  And then enough
people have to email me to make me feel like continued development is worth
while.


If you are happy with the way this software works for you,
I strongly encourage/request that you submit your *hasrv scripts back to me
so that they can be used by other people as well.



Philip Brown, October, 2003
http://www.bolthole.com/freeha/

