Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2020 17:36:03 +0000 From: "Kralj Karlo" <karlo@klarinet.osamsb.hr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Mirroring_a_root_filesystem_from_one_computer_to_another_for_a?= =?UTF-8?Q?vailability?= Message-ID: <20200405173605.CF1653280060@mailuser.nyi.internal>
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When hardware breaks, I generally want to fix it or switch to other hardware until I fix the first hardware. I tend to break things further when I do either of these, so I have decided to get at least two of each hardware so that I can easily move things off one broken hardware until I fix it. I would like set up two machines with practically identical hardware and keep their data the same so that when one breaks I can start using the another. I want to mirror all filesystems, including root, and I do not need failover to happen automatically. In fact, I would prefer to keep the spare hardware off most of the time, and I am fine with the mirror being out of date. For context, this is my personal computer at home. My inclination is to set up each machine with two separate FreeBSD systems on separate zpools on separate hard drives, use one for the main system, and use one just for mirroring. (The mirroring system would use two small cheap disks in a mirror.) When I want to switch which system is the master, I would change the boot device in the BIOS. Is there a better way? For example, is HAST appropriate? I am specifically curious about this detail: Since I want to mirror the root filesystem, it seems that the only safe way is to have a second root filesystem. The second could be in RAM or on another dataset or on a separate hard drive. It could be a copy of first filesystem or a totally separate filesystem. What is an easy way to set this up, or is there a safe way that does not require a second root system? Also, I wouldn't mind thoughts on networking, but I am confident that the networking will be straightforward, so I'm mostly wondering how to mirror the hard drives.
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